Among the cards of the 1943 tour, the word "karşılama" appears for the first time with this recording. Two musicians from the village of Kızıleğrek in the Türnük district of Merzifon, the zurna player Osman Keleş and the davul player Hüseyin Duran, played a yol havası, a road tune, for the team, and "Karşılama" was added to its name on the card in brackets. In the following weeks the team would record several more karşılamas on the Black Sea coast. The notation of this first example from Merzifon has not been published, and it did not enter the TRT repertoire.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none
  • Source persons (players): Osman Keleş (zurna player, born Rumi 1330), Hüseyin Duran (davul player, Rumi 1331); both from the village of Kızıleğrek in the Türnük district of Merzifon
  • Place and date of collection: Merzifon, 8 July 1943; both in square brackets in the catalogue, Kaya's correction
  • 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), no. 3660
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1121/B-2
  • Genre: road tune, karşılama; instrumental, davul and zurna
  • Mode, rhythm: not entered on the card
  • Music: anonymous
  • Source link: Kaya's thesis; there is no TRT link

Lyrics

The catalogue gives this davul and zurna tune no line of words. Its notation has been published neither in a collection nor in a study. The only document that could make the melody heard today is disc 1121, kept in the Folklore Archive that passed to the State Conservatory of Hacettepe University; the card for the piece is among the card copies TRT reproduced in the 1970s.

Collections and Variants

When the team came down to the Black Sea coast that same summer, it wrote the name "karşılama" on cards several more times: "Salınık (Urumeli Karşılaması)" in Bafra on 16 July, "Karşılama (Kol Oyunu)" in Ordu on 20 July, "Misafir (Karşılama) Havası" in Şebinkarahisar on 27 July and "Kuşluhan Karşılaması" in Giresun on 28 July. Whether these pieces are related in melody to the Merzifon recording cannot be known until their notations are published; what they share is only the name. The Merzifon Karşılaması in the TRT repertoire rests on an undated collection by Nejat Buhara, and its relation to this 1943 recording is likewise unclear.

Story

The bracketed word can be understood in two ways: the tune may have been played at a welcoming ceremony, or "karşılama" may be the name of a type of dance. The card does not say which, and no account on the point has been collected in Merzifon and printed. The Şebinkarahisar title "Misafir (Karşılama) Havası", the guest tune, brings the welcoming of guests to mind, but the Merzifon card carries no such addition.

Musical Features

The karşılama was placed at the end of side B of disc 1121, after Musa Aslan's "Kırklar Zamahı", which runs over two discs. Keleş is on the zurna, Duran on the davul; Kaya's performer list shows only the instruments played in the recording. According to the dates in the catalogue, the pair played nine pieces for the team on 8 July, and no line of words was written on any of their cards. The card gives neither scale nor rhythm.

Performers and Recordings

The pieces from Keleş and Duran's Merzifon session with published pages are Gelin Ağlatma, Bıçak(?) Oyun Havası and Güreş (Dönmesi – Kapışması). The semah that precedes the karşılama on the disc is described under the title Geldiğiniz Evler Dolu Olsun Nurdan. No later performance of this karşılama turns up in the sources. The dance tunes of Merzifon are discussed together with the province's songs in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources