NOTE: It is with great reluctance that I am moving the content of this site to my 1001Turku channel on YouTube.com. The intrusion of offensive and irrelevant ads into my posts makes this necessary in order to respect the artistry of 1000s of Turkish folk musicians, soloists and scholars, and the time and effort it takes for me to prepare each video, its translation, and my personal commentary. I apologize for any inconvenience this may create for subscribers to this page.
Türkü (Turkish folk music) is sung from Istanbul and the Balkans in the West, to Urumxi and Samarkand in the East. It’s the “roots music” of Turkic peoples everywhere, and its breadth and depth are astonishing. Collections of folk songs from towns and villages across Turkey alone — not to mention the Turkic republics of the former Soviet Union — run into tens of thousands of individual melodies and lyrics! The relevance of Turkish folk music as a repository of what it means to be Turkish is almost beyond comprehension. Dozens of TV shows every week in Turkey feature nothing but türkü. This is music from the heart and for the heart. Timeless. Beyond generations and borders.
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Hello Dr. Clark,
On https://binbirturku.wordpress.com/about/turkish-folk-songs/benim-adim-dertli-dolap-endless-trouble-is-my-name/ , It seems to me that you are interpreting the word “dolap” as “cupbard/wardrobe/locker”. Actually Yunus is using the word in its original sense, meaning “water wheel”.
Regards,
Ahmet Toprak
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Director, San Francisco Turkish Radio
Host, World of Classics
Host, Orient Express
Ahmet Bey –
I don’t actually know how old you are, but, as a successful radio host, you deserve the honorific!
Thank you, first, for looking into my WordPress site, and, secondly, for taking time to respond. Not many do.
While living in Turkey, I knew, of course, of dolaps. Finding an apartment with built-in closets was a near impossibility. So free-standing dolaps were the answer.
I do know too that dolap comes in two flavors: a box of some sort, and something that turns to display its contents: a revolving shelf in a kitchen, a ferris wheel, a water wheel, and so on. I had hoped that translating “dertli dolap” as “endless trouble” would work. Perhaps not well enough, though. As you suggested, it doesn’t entirely give the feel of trouble coming around again and again without end.
I’ll be thinking about this as I re-post the song and my notes to YouTube. Just today – which explains my months late reply to your very kind observation – I added an announcement to my opening page, telling readers that I’m moving all the content to YouTube. I’ve found that WordPress employs what I call “ad shaming” – dropping offensive and repulsive ads into my posts – to try to force me to upgrade my free account to one that would cost nearly $100 annually. I can do quite nicely, thank you, with YouTube or Google Drive as a host for my material.
Finally, I’m looking forward to tuning in to San Francisco Turkish Radio. I’ll take a look as well at World of Classics and Orient Express. I had no idea that such stations were operating in the US, and I’m very happy they are helping ease the pain of cultural separation that occurs when one moves from his or her memleket to an el diyarı. :) I’ve done it myself.
Sincerely,
Doug Clark
Fort Collins, CO
(trulyawfulguitar@gmail.com)