Aise

Aise (Greek: Αϊσέ, Turkish: Ayşe),[1] Turkish: Atımı Bağladım Ben Bir Ormana, is an instrumental dance tune common throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Sections of its melody are found as part of “Selanik”(“Thessalonikê”), a tune from Macedonia; in apiece by the Ottoman Armenian composer Tatyos Efendi; and in the song, “Love’s Like a Pin,”from Asia Minor and Propontis (for a recording, see Songs and Tunes of Thrace, CUP CD 7-8, 1:3). What was probably the first recording has also been identified: a 78 made in Cairo in 1910 under the title, “Bulbul Al-Afrah” (“The Happy Nightingale”), with the Jewish musician Ibrahim Sahalun ’s Takht on violin. In Lesvos, the tune is called “Aisé” (a Turkish female name). It may have had lyrics at some point in the past and was most commonly performed in the west of the island.

The tune is characteristic of the petachtos karsilamas- an entire category of dance performed to tunes with a very rapid time signature (although today, thanks to the choreographic intervention of the dance association, it is presented as a “chair dance”). This type of karsilamas is also called aïdinikos (see the section on dance), and the rhythm has nine beats (2+2+2+3).There are similar folkloric tunes known as Gel Gel Aman.