Deyiş in Transmission: Alevi Poetry and Music as Religious Tradition

Abstract

Religious poems sung with music, the Alevi deyiş are an integral part of Alevi ritual and social life. Due to the dynamics of oral transmission, the same deyiş can be performed with all kinds of music, the words of the deyiş can change from one performance to the next, and pen names can multiply. The unique experiential function of the deyiş lies precisely in this dynamic and fluid plurality. The deyiş serve as the anchor of communal identity, linking the group to a mythico-historical past that also constitutes the hermeneutical background for making sense of the present and near past. Born from an affect that is at once personal and communal, the oral tradition of deyiş is an experience of collective and personal agency, re-created at each moment in the acts of performance and active listening. Grounded in conceptual frameworks on emotion, embodiment, and orality, the article explores the transmission of deyiş through the cases of early Republican singer-poet Acirc;şık Veysel (d. 1973), poems by Kaygusuz Abdal (flourished late fourteenth-early fifteenth century) and Pir Sultan Abdal (flourished sixteenth century) in the compilation of Ottoman palace musician Ali Ufuki (d. 1675), and modern musical interpretations of Kaygusuz Abdal's poem.