Aba da Bir Kebe de Bir Giyene (Coarse Cloak or Felt, All the Same)
Story
Opening with the line “aba da bir kebe de bir giyene” (“a coarse cloak or a felt mantle, it is all the same to the one who wears it”), this is one of the best known and earliest recorded folk songs of the Çorum region. The “aba” and “kebe” of the title are garments woven from rough wool that were worn locally; the song uses them to say that what matters is not a person’s clothing but the love and the inner self beneath it. Built from everyday speech, its verses treat the themes of love and contentment with great simplicity.
The song’s true significance comes from its place in the first systematic folk-music collection efforts in Turkey. According to the sources it was recorded during a field expedition in Çorum in 1939, making it one of the earliest documented examples of the region’s musical memory.
About
In form it is a “kırık hava” (metered folk tune). The sources give its region as Çorum (central district). It is reported to have been recorded during the 1939 collection expedition to Çorum by Muzaffer Sarısözen and the researchers working with him, with İfakat Yaykar and Sabite Taşkaya named among the source singers. That expedition was part of the early Republican effort to archive the folk-song heritage of Anatolia.
Lyrics
The following is a representative excerpt of the song’s traditional (anonymous) words, given in English summary rather than as a literal poetic translation:
A coarse cloak or a felt mantle — all one to the one who wears it.
Do not put on the red and green, my love;
your golden hair would spill down to the ground.
(Line variants appear across different sources and within the region itself.)