Music, Dance, and Leisure in Turkey, 1911
From Turkey and the Turks by Z. Duckett Ferriman, 1911.
Location: Turkey
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Turkey and the Turks by Z. Duckett Ferriman, 1911.
The children romp like ours, but they have fewer set games. I have seen little girls, however, playing a game that looked much like tick-touchwood. I have also been told that in one harem, at least, “hunt the slipper" is very popular. The boys are now taking to football. But Turkish children generally have a greater capacity for sitting still than those of the West. It is part of the national disposition towards keyf, a word of which it is hard to give the exact meaning—it is used to express health. But perhaps the best rendering would be “doing nothing."
Song and dance hold the chief place in the recreations of the harem. There is great store of both. It is rather difficult for Westerns to enter into their spirit. The following is a specimen.
Adanli The Dweller in Adanli
Adanun yolari iki There are two roads at Adana.
Kaidi koondooranun bir teké I let fall one of my shoes.
Bizim evdé kainana iki In our house there are two mothers-in-law.
Aman Adanali shirin Adanali O Adanali, sweet Adanali,
Ben dyanarayorum Sana Adanali I die for thee, O Adanali!
Kiz g-euleu, hellé hellé geuleu Girl rose covered, O heavens,
Peshtimalii piishkiilu rose covered;
Aman karakashleu, janum, Ball-fringed apron.
karageuzlum O black-browed one,
Ben dyanamyorum sana seerma My soul, my black-eyed one,
satchli Vayee! Vayee! I die for thy golden hair.
Adanalum bak dukcha sana O my Adanali, when I gaze upon you,
Ush! yenai birshayl oliyor Ah! again something comes over me.
Bir sheftali anan baban haïreeneh A kiss for the weal of your mother and father. A
man Adanali, shérin Adanali Adanali, sweet Adanali,
Ben dyanamyorum sana Adanali I am dying for thee,
O Adanali. Kiz geuleu, etc.
Adanan yolari tashlik The roads of Adana are stony.
Yuk dir jepimizdé besh para I have not five paras in my harshluk pocket to spend.
Kiz geuleu, etc.
The words are childish, but the song is very dramatic. It is accompanied by dance and gesture, the chorus of “Vayee! Vayee!” being sung to the snapping of fingers. It is done with the thumb and second finger, and is an accomplishment not easy to bring to perfection. Turkish dancing is much harder to learn than our dances.
In the upper classes the girls know ours and waltz well, but they prefer their own, in which every part of the body is brought into play, and the arms and hands have quite as much work as the feet. They find Western dancing stiff and expressionless, as indeed it is, compared with theirs. The Eastern dance allows room for the display of individuality and temperament. No two dancers interpret it quite in the same manner. It is to a great extent pantomimic. In the song quoted above, the slipping of a shoe is accompanied by a limping hobbling step, the dancer turning her head as though looking for the lost object. When well done it has a quaint grace impossible to describe.
Young girls dance these quasi-narrative movements with a spontaneity and abandon which rids them of any idea of a performance carefully acquired.
The language of many of the songs is strongly tinctured with Persian and Arabic, and the girls say they are often difficult to learn on that account. This, like other Turkish arts, is borrowed from those two sources, and it is doubtful if anything in song or letters can be traced to the ancestral tents on the Asian plateaus. The music is for the most part in the minor key, the wailing loved of the Arabs, but not always. In the song “Adanali," the chorus “Kiz geuleu," etc., is set to a lively movement quite Western in character.
This is the case too with the comic songs, which are couched in colloquial Turkish with few Arabic or Persian adornments. The mother-in-law is often the target of these. Although she is greatly respected, human nature takes this harmless revenge for the power she enjoys. Here is one among many of them, which may be called, for want of a better title—
The Plaint of the Daughter-in-Law
Aman dostlar né leyim Derdimin kimleri suleyejeghim Aman khojamin nenessi hitch doormayor chenési Rapta bal var kainana
(O friends, what shall I do? To whom shall I tell my woes? Ah! the chin of my husband's mother is never still. On the shelf there is honey, mother-in-law.)
Niyér ho bakayun sen bana Oghlun beni chok seviyor Chatlata patlata kainana
(Why do you look unkindly at me? Your son loves me right well, Burst and split mother-in-law !)
Ojak bashur yarooldoor Kainana bana darooldoor Darooloorsa Darolsun Oghlou bana saralsun
(The hearth cowl is cracked. My mother-in-law is angry with me. Let her be angry; Her son embraces me.)
Black eyes and auburn hair are esteemed beautiful, and Karageuzlum, my black-eyed one, and Samoor Satchlim, my auburn-haired one, figure in the love-songs. Plump hands (tombool elerí) are also appreciated. The lover declares he delights in the pretty chatter of his beloved. He calls it chittur-pittur, an expressive locution, as is the chatlata-patlata in the daughter-in-law's song.
The Turks have a great liking for “catchy” choruses, and when their education extends to other tongues than their own, they seize upon foreign songs very readily. I have in mind one harem on the Asiatic shore of the Sea of Marmora, where the children delight in “coon” songs and the cake-walk, and regale the Pasha with “For he's a jolly good fellow." The stranger passing beneath the latticed windows might haply be startled to hear “Wait for the Wagon" or “John Brown's Knapsack " trolled out with youthful enthusiasm.
The native musical instruments most in favour are the lute, the tambour, which is not a drum, but a banjo with a very long neck, the dulcimer, and a sort of small viol about a foot long, having three strings, and played with a short, highly arched bow. It is rude and primitive in appearance, but the sounds it yields are more like the human voice than those of any other instrument I have heard. The native flageolet or flute is also much appreciated.
Visitors who have attended a zikr of the mevlevi dervishes must have been impressed by its singularly soft and mellow tones in the dreamy whispering music of that function. The tambourine, which is called dèf is used for dances. Among instruments of foreign make are the mandoline, the zither, the violin, which is played on the knee, the violoncello, and the piano. The latter, as in the West, holds the chief place, at least among the upper classes, who are not seldom proficient in its use.
In the harem mentioned above, the eldest daughter, aged seventeen, interprets Beethoven and Chopin with a skill and delicacy of feeling that would be appreciated by Western ears. Her favourite songs are “The Brook" and “Come into the garden, Maud," perhaps chiefly on account of the words, for she is Tennysonian and greets the moon as “the Planet of Love on high," loves the ballads “Lady Clare," “Edward Gray," and the rest, but, above all, the songs in “The Princess," and best of all “The splendour falls on castle walls." She has never been in England.
How she pictures the environment of Tennyson's poetry, depending as it does so much on minute observation of the aspects of nature in the particular spot wherein the scene is set, I know not. But it appeals to her, and if ever she goes to England, she will be well equipped for the appreciation of English landscape. Her own land sufficiently resembles it in some of its features, to enable her to form an idea. There is the green-sward, the bramble, the woodbine, the daisied meadow. There are no “immemorial elms," but there is the venerable plane with its vast limbs, the oak, and the spreading tops of the pines.
Ferriman, Z. Duckett. Turkey and the Turks. James Pott & Co., 1911.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
