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The troubadour is the true voice of Anatolia.
they sings poems of the people and for the people - poems rich in folk
mythology, in the best expressive resources of colloquial Turkish, in sonorous
tones and sensual affection for nature. The minstrel, a pivotal fiğure of
Turkish communal and cultural life, can be a resident poet or a wandering bard.
Hembodies an unbroken tradition of at least ten centuries in Anatolia and many
more if one takes into account the literary life of the Turks before they
settled in Anatolia.
Turkish troubadours have been mystics, musicians, teachers, rebels, humorists,
heroes, entertainers -- above all, gifted men who preserve and expand the
national folklore in lyric poetry and indigenous music. They often leave their
audiences spell-bound with their spontaneity, extemporizing their poems in
full stanzaic forms and elaborate rhyme patterns. Their voices are tender or
vehement, loving or lamenting. They chant paeans of nature. heroism, love and
bemoan poverty, injustice, sadness. Anatolia expresses its joys and sorrows
through its minstrels.
Minstrel is a kind of poet seen in the Turkish Folk Literature since the
beginning of 11th Century. It is believed that minstrel takes his quality of
poet by drinking the "love wine" served by the sage in his dream and by
seeing the "image of his lover". The minstrel candidate generally sees a
lover or a saz (a folkloric musical instrument) in his
dream. The ornament of
the dream is a dervish with white beard and sometimes one sometimes three full
glasses. The glass can be usually seen as a bowl in the dream. The liquids in
the bowls presented to the poets are called love full. It takes the name wine
with the effect of Persian Literature. These are named as; apprenticeship,
quality of sage and love wine.
Our minstrels are usually educated by an
expert minstrel. They learn both the expert idioms and procedure and methods
about the art performance from him. After adequately comprehending the ways in
which the experts perform their art at the minstrel meetings and coffeehouses
frequented by wandering minstrels, the poets who have become experts take
apprentices for themselves and this tradition continues in this way.
The minstrel shows his knowledge, emotion and
ability in the quarrel he makes. The aim in the quarrels is to compete and win.
At least two minstrels come face to face at the quarrels. The quarrel begins
with a respected person in the meeting or an expert poet telling a rhyme. The
quarrel ends with the defeat of the minstrel who cannot find an appropriate
quatrain to the rhyme.
Story telling forms one of the main elements
of Minstrel Literature. Most of the saz poets who are faithful to the
tradition tell stories in the minstrel meetings. Some of the expert minstrels
tell folk stories that are created by the experts and on the other hand they
tell the stories they have created. Çıldırlı Aşık Şenlik, Sabit Müdami
are minstrels who have contributed to the tradition from this aspect.
The representatives of this tradition, who are
called Şaman by Tonguzlar, Bo or Bugue by Mongols and Baryatlar, Oyun by
Yakutlar, Ozan by Oğuzlar, have expressed the life style, thoughts and
feelings, points of view of the society to the events by their poems. Yunus Emre, Pir Sultan Abdal, Köroğlu,
Dadaloğlu, Karacaoğlan, Erzurumlu Emrah, Ercişli Emrah, Dertli, Aşık
Veysel have been the most important representatives of this tradition.
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