The title says "Söyleyim Dinleyim" ("Let me speak, let me listen"), while the first line written on the card turns the words towards the listeners: "Söyleyim de dîneñ mefalı canlar". In the title both verbs are in the first person; in the line it is the minstrel who speaks and the "canlar", the dear ones, who are to listen. The ñ at the end of the word "dîneñ" is one of the signs Muzaffer Sarısözen devised in 1937 for writing down dialect features, and marks the nasal n known as "sağır kâf". The deyiş was recorded in Zigala on 5 July 1943 from Davut Aslan and Mehmet İnan and did not enter the TRT repertoire; neither its text nor its melody appears in any publication.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not found under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Source persons: Davut Aslan (saz; farmer, year of birth on the card Rumi 1308) and Mehmet İnan (saz; farmer, year of birth on the card Rumi 1327), both from the village of Girap in the Ezine subdistrict of central Amasya
  • Place and date of collection: the village of Zigala (today Aydınca), 5 July 1943; place name in square brackets in the catalogue
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, Rıza Yetişen
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu, İTÜ, 2014; no. 3605
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1110/B-3
  • Genre: deyiş
  • Mode, rhythm: not written on the card
  • Lyrics and music: recorded as anonymous; no poet's name in the title
  • Source link: no TRT entry; the details are in Kaya's thesis

Lyrics

The line of the deyiş that remains in the catalogue:

Söyleyim de dîneñ mefalı canlar

It can be rendered roughly as "Let me speak, and you listen, dear ones"; "dîneñ" is the local pronunciation of "dinleyin", listen. The word "mefalı" in between remains a problem: the catalogue offers no explanation and the word carries no reliable meaning on its own, so it has been left without an equivalent in the rendering. For the rest of the line, the other stanzas and the notation there is no publication to turn to; the deyiş remains whole only in the voices of Aslan and İnan, in the second-to-last section of side B of disc 1110.

Story

The title of the mersiye the pair sang the same day carries the note "Garip'ten" ("from Garip") in brackets, which ties that piece to a poet. The title of Söyleyim Dinleyim, by contrast, has no poet's name, either from the card or added later. From whom the deyiş came down, and where the two saz players from Girap learned it, the card does not say; nor is there any printed text telling of its composition.

Musical Features

Both men from Girap went into the list of performers with their saz; whether the two saz were played together in this deyiş is not stated separately. How the voices were shared, whether one sang while the other accompanied or whether they sang together, was not entered on the card. Its mode, rhythm and range are not recorded either.

Performers and Recordings

Disc 1110 is given over entirely to the recordings of these two saz players from the village of Girap. Side A holds "Gönüller Semahı" and "Kırklar Semahı", sung by Davut Aslan alone, and Mehmet İnan's "Karacaoğlandan"; side B holds the pieces they sang together: "Sarcalan Köyünden Molla Mustafa ve Oğlu", "Keklik", Söyleyim Dinleyim and "Leylü Neha Arz Ederdim". Of these, Gönüller Semahı entered the TRT repertoire as Yüce Dağ Başında Koyun Güderken, and the Sarcalan song as Değirmen Önünde Bir Böyük Tarla. The pair's mersiye on the previous disc is described on the page Kaf u Nun Hitabı İzhar Olmadan, and their deyiş that names Ürgüp on the page Cemal: Şen Olasın Ürgüp. For Söyleyim Dinleyim, however, no trace has been found of any recording besides the pair's. The deyiş of Amasya's minstrels find their place, together with the province's folk songs and long songs, in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources