Two violinists and a clarinettist from the village of Sarı in Merzifon, joined by a tef player from Hırka, opened side A of disc 1119 with this tune on 7 July 1943, and straight afterwards played another piece called simply "Topal Havası". The name "Topal Kız", the lame girl, occurs in no other piece among the conservatory's field recordings of 1937 to 1955. No line of lyrics was written on the card, and the notation never found its way into print; the tune has no counterpart in the TRT repertoire.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; Kaya's comparison table with the TRT repertoire lists no match either
  • Source persons (players): Tahsin Olgun (clarinet, born Rumi 1326), Rasim Olgun (violin, farmer, Rumi 1324), Turabi Tanrısever (violin, Rumi 1329), all three from the village of Sarı in Merzifon; Muharrem Coşkun (tef, Rumi 1329), from the village of Hırka in Merzifon
  • Place of collection: Merzifon (in square brackets in the catalogue, supplied by Kaya)
  • Date of collection: 7 July 1943
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team; Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Source publication: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), recording list no. 3648
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1119/A-1
  • Genre: instrumental dance tune
  • Mode, rhythm: not entered on the card
  • Music: anonymous
  • Source link: Kaya's catalogue thesis; there is no TRT page

Lyrics

Like the quartet's other pieces this is an instrumental melody, and nothing beyond its name reached the catalogue. No printed notation turned up. The sound itself waits on disc 1119 among the records of the former Folklore Archive, which moved to Hacettepe; a photocopy of the collection card ended up among the cards transferred from the archive to TRT in the 1970s.

Story

The name looks as if it remembers a person, yet the card has not a word about this "lame girl", and no folk account explaining it has been printed. Elsewhere in the catalogue the word "topal" enters titles from other regions too, though almost always in pieces with words: there are recordings called "Topal Koşma" from Sivas in 1937, İskilip in 1939, Çankırı and Çerkeş in 1945 and Mengen in 1948, and a "Topalların Mehmedin Türküsü" was recorded in Denizli in 1938. The two Merzifon pieces are rare cases of the word naming a wordless dance tune. Whether they are connected cannot be drawn from the catalogue.

Musical Features

A clarinet, two violins and a tef: because Kaya's performer list shows the instrument each musician actually held in the recording, the line-up of Topal Kız Havası is certain. By the catalogue's estimate some of the tunes recorded in Merzifon the next day were played on davul and zurna; this quartet, by contrast, brings together the village's bowed and wind instruments. Which notes the tune moves through, what metre it was played in and how many joined the dance: on all this the card is silent.

Performers and Recordings

On the team's first day in Merzifon the quartet recorded five tunes in a row; Topal Kız Havası is the fourth, and one of the others with a published page is Bağlar Havası. The three musicians from Sarı also accompanied Hamdullah Yılmaz's song "Sarı Kız" in the third item on the same disc, a song that entered the TRT repertoire as Çıktım Kavak Dalına. No one is recorded in the sources as playing Topal Kız Havası after that disc. The essay that sets Merzifon in one frame with Gümüşhacıköy and central Amasya is The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources