Bugün Bize Pir Geldi - Turkish Song

Vocals, arrangement and video by Farya Faraji. Bugün Bize Pir Geldi is a Turkish song from the Alevi tradition, a Muslim denomination of Sufism. Sufism uses music as a means of approaching the divine and celebrating it. The interesting thing with the Alevi repertoire is that it has been introduced into the wider scene of Turkish music, and in the last decades, much of this repertoire has been picked up by mainstream singers and artists like Arif Sağ and İbrahim Tatlıses. My arrangement is meant to evoke the “secularised“ and mainstream form of the song as played today, where it is played much like the songs of the Türkü repertoire, the folk music repertoire of Turkey, often urban in origin. The recent adoption of the Alevi repertoire into the wider Türkü means the songs are performed, like in this case, as “Kırık havalar,“ rhythmic songs with regular time signatures where the Bağlama dominates the music, and the song is defined by the player’s intimate relationship with the Bağlama. Other instruments include the kopuz and cura, also widely used in Türkü. I also included a tanbur and daf drums as reminders of the Sufi origin of the song, thus bridging its modern mainstream form as a Türkü, dominated by the Bağlama and its Saz-relatives, the Kopuz and Cura, with its Sufi origins where the Daf drums and Tanbur play an integral part. The vocal production of Turkish folk music is also something I wanted to convey--Turkish music is special among many eastern traditions in that it emphasises the bass part of the voice greatly. Women and men are both often expected to sing in very low, bass-y registers that utilise the chest colour of the voice, which is unlike most of the traditional styles of singing in neighbouring Arabic countries and Iran. The melismatic oriental style of ornamenting notes, often nasal and high-pitched, is perfectly accepted in Turkish music when delivered in a warm, deep-voice, which I tried to convey here. You can refer to Salih Gündoğdu’s and Nuray Hafiftaş’ versions for this sort of bass vocal production, and to İbrahim Tatlıses’ for a more typically high pitched-one. Lyrics in Turkish: Bugün bize pir geldi Gülleri taze geldi Önü sıra Kamberi Aliyel Mürteza geldi Ali bizim şahımız Kâbe kıblegâhımız Miraçtaki Muhammed O bizim padişahımız Eyvallah şahım eyvallah Hak La ilahe illallah Eyvallah Pirim eyvallah Adı güzeldir güzel Şah Padişahım Yaradan Okur akdan karadan Ben pirimden ayrıldım Bin yıl geçti aradan Aramı uzattılar Yarama tuz bastılar Fazlıdan bir kul geldi Bedestanda sattılar Sattılar bedestanda Ses verir gülistanta Muhammed’in hatemi Bergüzardır Arslanda Kul Himmet Üstadımız Onda yoktur yâdımız Şah-ı Merdan aşkına Hak vere muradımız English translation: Today a master had came to us His roses came fresh And his faithful servant Ali Murteza has come Thank you my lord thank you The rightful God, the only God is God, Thank you master thank you, His name is beautiful, he’s a fair lord Ali is our lord Kaaba is our qiblah Mohammad in the ascension He is our Shah, My king, He reads from everywhere I’ve been away from my master A thousand years have passed They came between me and him They poured salt onto my wound A slave came from Fazlı They sold him at Bedestan They sold him at Bedestan He shouts from the rose garden The seal of Mohammad Is a souvenir in a lion,