Entertainers and the Making of the Pacific Circuit, 1850-1890, (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2010), 1516. singer Honorata de la Rama-Hernandez, commonly known as Atang de la Rama, was a singer and bodabil performer who became the first Filipina film actress. Original text: Tumutulong si Atang de la Rama upang ang mga may pangit na asal na nanonood sa mga dulaan ay matutong gumalang sa arte. 27 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 11011. That was why Atang de la Ramas pocket was always empty [Emphasis in the original].Footnote68. Honorata de la Rama-Hernandez (January 11, 1902 - July 11, 1991), commonly known as Atang de la Rama was a singer and bodabil performer who became the first Filipina film actress.. Atang de la Rama was born in Tondo, Manila on January 11, 1905. Similarly, de la Rama remains a crucial figure in the early history of cinema in the Philippines, even as she herself was starting out on the sarsuwela stage. Cultural Center of the Philippines. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina. De la Ramas fame as the Queen of Kundiman spread beyond Manila as she embarked on several extended tours abroad in 1926, 1932, and 1936. The sartorial imagery of the dalagang bukid became a standard for young women who had their portraits taken in the 1920s and 1930s, wearing balintawak with pastoral backgrounds and using props such as a banga or clay jug and baskets of flowers or produce. To complicate the stereotyped reading of the morally suspect flirt, however, de la Rama uses her voice to paint a subtler portrait of Sesangs struggle. Continue your trip to show other nations and whites our capacity for all kinds of pursuits and that we also have artists that we can be proud of!Footnote46 Such adulation underlines de la Ramas inextricable connection to the song form and her role in crafting kundimans canonic place in Philippine music. Such bodabil performances not only complicate de la Ramas image as the virtuous dalagang bukid but they also illustrate the overlapping networks of different popular entertainment circuits in the Philippines in the 1920s and 1930s. We use cookies to improve your website experience. 60 The term terno emerged in the late 1900s and originally referred to the use of a single type of material (like the sinamay or abac fabric) for the camisa, pauelo, and saya of the dress, creating a more uniform and matching look. Such critiques and social commentary also projected gendered prescriptions of the ideal Filipina as demure and virtuous, the dalagang Filipina, a recurring trope in Philippine literature and culture that persists to this day. 2021 Felice P Sta Maria 2019 Danny E Dalena 2018 Hence, it is in Atang de la Ramas performance, her creative authorship, that the sarsuwelas are made real. Born January 11, 1905 Died July 11, 1991 (86) Add or change photo on IMDbPro Add to list Known for Dalagang bukid 7.2 The second in the list is Punyal ni Rosa with 366 performances. Through sarsuwela librettos and scores, rare sound recordings, reviews, publicity photos, and de la Ramas writings, I amplify her musical and metaphorical voice to address the critical role of women in the production of sarsuwelas and popular culture in the Philippines. She is still the Atang de la Rama of the popular Dalagang Bukid.Footnote31 Vera Reyess observations reveal how, after nearly a decade, de la Ramas reputation and early success in Dalagang Bukid remained fresh with theater goers in Manila, even as de la Rama had moved on to portray other characters, and after she had become popular in the thriving vaudeville stages of Manila in the mid1920s. She was married to National Artist for Literature, Amado V. Hernandez. Pag may welga, magpapakuha yan ng saku-sakong bigas at lata ng biskuwit kayat palaging laslas ang bulsa ni Atang de la Rama. Emphasis in the original article. She often looks out for those who distract her when she sings in the theater, and the moment she finishes, she goes down the stage and slaps whoever heckles her many times over. 58 Roces, Is the Suffragist an American Colonial Construct, 3233. De la Ramas celebrity status also carried through the visual aspects of her public persona on and off stage, cultivating an image that was both modern and traditional, Filipino and cosmopolitan. Atang Dela Rama was born on January 11, 1905 in Manila, Philippines. Anvil Publishing.2004. Details Release date September 25, 1919 (Philippines) Country of origin Philippines By the age of 7 she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota Sueo de un Vals and Marina. Ricardo Trimilloss essay in the collection, Enacting Modernity through Voice, Body, and Gender: Filipina Singers from the Close of the Philippine-American War to the Onset of Martial Law (1913-1972), 26180, in particular, traces how popular Filipina singers were instrumental in the creation of a Philippine modernity from 1913 to 1972. When there was a strike, he would order sacks of rice and cans of biscuits and charge them to me. 46 Ibid. Set as a foxtrot, Nabasag ang Banga tells the story of a young maiden fetching water who accidentally slips and breaks her jar when a persistent suitor approaches her. Despite the poor quality of some of the recordings, her voice remains striking in its clarity and vibrancy, a distinctive characteristic that resounded particularly well in early Philippine radio broadcasting. Moreover, de la Ramas choice of a short wavy hairstyle (the Marcel and finger waves hairstyles) and use of makeup points to what Clutario argues represented a conscious act among Filipinas to transform their appearance as a way to make claims to modernity vis--vis modern beauty.Footnote64 Combined with the terno, de la Ramas appearance conveyed a fusion of the traditional and modern, pastoral and cosmopolitan. On January 11, 1902, Honorata "Atang" de la Rama, National Artist for theater and music, was born in Pandacan, Manila. She was an actress, known for Dalagang bukid (1919), Mahiwagang binibini: Ang kiri (1939) and Oriental Blood (1930). At the height of her career, she sang kundimans and other Filipino songs in concerts in such cities as Hawaii, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Her vocal technique and theatricality not only made her especially well-suited for the genre but also created the kundimans distinctive sentimentality and now-standard performative nuances. national hometown : pandacan artist manila award type of art : for theater and theater music and music tools and materials : (1987) music and films why is the artists' art artistic, distinctive, and of superior quality? Honorata de la Rama-Hernandez commonly known as Atang de la Rama was a singer and bodabil performer who became the first Filipina film actress. Atang de la Rama. A careful study of the life and career of de la Rama fills a huge gap in the history of the performing arts in the Philippines that has emphasized male playwrights, composers, and political elites in their representations of the Filipina. While playwrights and composers at the turn of the twentieth century used the term zarzuela for their Tagalog-language works, the term sarsuwela (alternatively spelled sarswela or sarsuela) did not come into use until the late 1910s and early 1920s and, by then, were often used interchangeably with opereta. In this essay, I follow scholars Nicanor Tiongson and Doreen Fernandez in their use of sarsuwela as a general term to mean works produced in any of the local languages in the Philippines, including Tagalog-language repertoire, from the early 1900s to the present. Other photos of de la Rama from the 1930s onward show her holding the banga and wearing later versions of the balintawak that has a more straight-lined silhouette with matching fabric for the top and bottom parts of the dress. Although the text depicts an innocent and bucolic scene, de la Ramas performance of Nabasag ang Banga highlights a sexual subtext in which she plays teasingly with the demure and delicate dalagang bukid stereotype. Courtesy of Butterscotch Auction, Newspaper accounts of her tours abroad included descriptions of de la Ramas appearance, revealing the medias tendency to focus on female singers physical looks more than on their musical talent. This consisted of a top called the camisa, the saya skirt, and the pauelo, which evolved from a functional modesty shawl into a more decorative lapel sewn onto the camisa.Footnote59 The traje de mestiza was worn by upper class Filipino women and was reserved for evening- and formalwear. 17 The recording I used for this analysis is a compact disc compilation entitled Kamuning: Re-mastered (Quezon City: Yesteryears Music Gallery, 2000). While de la Ramas popularity as the dalagang bukid of the theatrical stage may have helped construct her good girl image, her performances outside of sarsuwela point to the broader network of popular entertainment in which she toyed with traditional expectations of Filipina femininity. Early life . These accounts skip over the existence of the kundiman in the popular entertainment stages like bodabil, thus helping to eliminate de la Ramas influence from the historical record. [4] She has also been a theatrical producer, writer and talent manager. One particular song recording, the duet Bibingka (a type of Filipino rice cake delicacy), is particularly illustrative in demonstrating de la Ramas jazzy vaudevillian character. In addition to the sarsuwela and bodabil stages, de la Rama commanded an audience via emerging new media such as audio recordings, radio, and film. By closing this message, you are consenting to our use of cookies. A copy of the playbill can be found in Adlai Laras personal Flickr photo collection,https://www.flickr.com/photos/9307819@N05/2544474500/in/photostream/ (accessed October 3, 2019). See Helen F. Samson-Lauterwald, Music in the Sarsuwelas of Severino Reyes (Lola Basyang) (Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016). 18 Tiongson similarly underlines de la Ramas flirtatious performance as he reconstructs the artists rendition of Nabasag ang Banga. See Nicanor Tiongson, Atang de la Rama: Unat Huling Bituin (Pasay City, Philippines: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1987), 19. In addressing performance as a source of creative power, I follow Carolyn Abbates theorization of how a musical work exists only as it is given phenomenal reality by its performers.Footnote7 It is through the artists voice and presence that the sarsuwelas texts and music come off the page and reach the audiences senses. This is significant when the use of fashion negotiated multiple aspects of Filipina femininity at a time when womens roles in the larger society were changing rapidly, and as de la Rama shaped her own professional career in the Philippines and abroad. On May 8, 1987, "for her sincere devotion to original Filipino theater and music, her outstanding artistry as singer, and as sarsuela actress-playwright-producer, her tireless efforts to bring her art to all sectors of Filipino society and to the world," President Corazon C. Aquino proclaimed Atang de la Rama a National Artist of the Philippines for Theater and Music.[5]. Film historian Nick Deocampo remarks how her debut on the sarsuwela stage as dalagang bukid convinced the films director, Jose Nepomuceno, to cast her. Honorata "Atang" Marquez de la Rama-Hernandez. For her achievements and contributions to the art form, she was hailed Queen of the Kundiman and of the Sarsuela in 1979, at the age of 74.[3]. At the meeting, de la Rama sang kundimans in honor of the voluntary exiles. Moved to tears, the account continues, Ricarte said to de la Rama this is the first time in I dont know how long that Ive heard one of our kundimans. Missing from this historiography of the kundiman, however, is de la Ramas active role in performing and building up the kundiman repertory as much as its composers had done. Siya pa rin ang Atang de la Rama ng napabantog na Dalagang Bukid., 32 Remigio Mat Castro, Pagkakaisa (January 12, 1930). 6 See, for example, Patricia Marion Lopez, Imaging Women in the Zarzuela, Philippine Humanities Review: Sarsuwela 11, no. Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine. 38 Santiago, The Development of Music in the Philippine Islands, 516. While Reyes extols the virtue and bravery of the Filipina, especially in her contributions to the revolution against Spain, he nevertheless reaffirms that the only natural place for women is in the home. Lahat na lang ng di mapagkakakitaan, nasa kanya na. As a form of denouement, a woman revolutionary general successfully overthrows the government and then promptly declines to take office; instead she urges her fellow women to go back to their true duties: rebuilding the home and the Filipino population.Footnote14 This reactionary narrative echoes musicologist Susan Thomass description of Cuban zarzuelas anti-feminist but pro-feminine plots in which playwrights relied on their female protagonists and the artistry of the female voice while continuing to uphold a peculiar set of social, political, and economic conditions which hinged on the role and behavior of women in Cuban society.Footnote15 As Filipino playwrights sought to create a world that mirrored the dramas of middle-class domestic life and the patriarchal social order of early-twentieth century Manila, the roles de la Rama performed reveal an intentional revision of gendered identities that rebelled against traditional expectations of womens behavior. Atang dela Rama is billed 'The First Star of Philippine Cinema' as she portrayed the title role in Dalagang Bukid in 1919. 31 Franco Vera Reyes, Taliba (April 26, 1930). Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab. Permission will be required if your reuse is not covered by the terms of the License. A sense of this interpretation can be gleaned from her recording of this pivotal song released years following the sarsuwelas premiere.Footnote17 Listening to the recording of Nabasag ang Banga, the power of de la Ramas voice is defined less by its intensity and more by the preciseness of her pitch and clarity of her tone. Scholars have rightly commented on how the sarsuwelas preserved the largely patriarchal social order of early twentieth-century Manila, even as the theatrical stage critiqued colonial powers.Footnote6 Yet to understand the sarsuwela as a purely representational form at the expense of its musical and performative aspects is to neglect the larger stakes of its world-making and the multiple possibilities of meaning it conveys. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 22558. By the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, the influx of American popular music (often collectively referred to by contemporary artists and critics as jazz) resulted in foxtrots, blues, Charleston (spelled tsarleston in the scripts), and, later on, the Hawaii an hula being incorporated into the sarsuwela repertoire. Since this award holds up the recipient to public honor and recognition by Ateneo de Manila University, the personal integrity and moral qualities of the honoree should also be considered, as honorees of the university are meant to be held up as models in their own lines of endeavor. She finds it impossible to keep on a balanced budget unless she helps her partner in lifethat is, she gets a job. De la Ramas voice resonates through the writers own recollection as it vividly creates the experience of the sarsuwela for its audience. al., Fashionable Filipinas, 141. The song ends with the maiden returning home in tears, explaining to her parents that an aswanga shapeshifting monster in Philippine mythologyscared her and took her jar, leaving her with nothing but her muddied clothes. As scholars of gender and womens history in the Philippines have argued, the early twentieth century is crucial in understanding how women were at the forefront of colonial encounters that ultimately shaped Philippine modernity and Filipinos struggles against and within the United States empire.Footnote9 Historian Genevieve Clutario, in particular, draws attention to how women used fashion and beauty regimens that did not neatly align with those imposed by the American colonial regime or those of Filipino nationalists who opposed womens suffrage and saw it as another form of American intervention.Footnote10 As a professional artist, de la Rama became a recognizable figure of the womens movement, serving as a model for the Filipina at work outside of the home. Several commentators unabashedly praised the diva in the local press. A democratic republic is one which guarantees the freedom to create, with no special instruction attached. These tensions between new and old, modern and traditional were mapped onto expectations of Filipina femininity against which de la Ramas performances continued to creatively rebel. De la Rama was instrumental in the popularization of the Tagalog song repertory across these different entertainment platforms; she activated voice and image to play a central role in creating a Filipina femininity in the 1920s that challenged expectations of womens work as solely devoted to home and family life. She was widowed in 1970 In 1970, at the age of 68, her husband, Amado V. Hernandez, passed away. Theater scholars have noted that de la Rama danced while singing Nabasag ang Banga during some performances.Footnote21 Her bakya (wooden clog slippers) tapping to the foxtrot rhythm poses a striking contrast to the image of the country maiden, projecting an ambivalent and playful reflection on U.S. American cultural influences. She firmly believed . Atang believed that art should be for everyone; not only did she perform in major Manila theaters such as the Teatro Libertad and the Teatro Zorilla, but also in cockpits and open plazas in Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. 51 From Lacnico-Buenaventuras 1985 interview with de la Rama. . 12 (2004): 75106, at 9798. Although it is difficult to ascertain how widely de la Ramas image from the 1919 playbill circulated, it is highly probable that her onstage character contributed to the popularity of the country theme in many studio photographs. She soon became a solo headliner, performing in Manila's largest theaters such as the Savoy, the Palace, and the Lux. She died on 11 July 1991 in the Philippines. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. Sesangs character as the former cabaret dancer embodies the modern, cosmopolitan woman of the 1920s, while scenes and costume details situate her worldly and morally questionable personality.Footnote28. In the final repetition of the songs chorus, de la Rama plays out affective vocal nuances with the pronounced slowness of her delivery. 20 Remigio Mat Castro, Nabasag ang Banga? Trivia (7) As Queen of Zarzuela, she starred in more than 50 zarzuelas. Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. De la Ramas dual image of the traditional Filipina and the cosmopolitan professional artist strikingly parallels these multiple strategies, and her inclusion in the publication highlights how her rising status as an international celebrity lent particular potency to the idea of feminine progress in the Philippines. The other women awardees largely belonged to performing arts categories. Atang de la Rama Collection: Manuscripts Home: Contents; Personal Papers -- Amado V. Hernanadez . Original text: Atang, sta es la primera vez desde hace no s cuanto tiempo que oigo un kundiman nuestro. And she gets away with it.Footnote47 While there are only a few accounts of de la Ramas performances outside of the kundiman repertoire, recordings provide more information about the breadth of styles and repertoire in which she excelled. [1] Atang de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. For other contemporary academic critiques to jazz, see Keppy, Tales of Southeast Asias Jazz Age, 8283. Standard historical accounts often point to Severino Reyess shift in his writing career to become a journalist and editor in the early 1920s as the beginning of sarsuwelas decline, just as vaudeville and film were becoming more popular in the Philippines. : Defining The Filipino Woman in Colonial Philippines, in Womens Suffrage in Asia: Gender, Nationalism and Democracy, eds. Angelita ( Atang de la Rama ), a young flower vendor who works in front of a cabaret named Dalagang Bukid, and poor law student Cipriano (Marceliano Ilagan) are in love. At the age of 15, she starred in the sarsuela Dalagang Bukid, where she became known for singing the song "Nabasag na Banga". For a detailed account of the different theater venues that staged Spanish and Tagalog repertoire throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Cristina Lacnico-Buenaventura, The Theater in Manila, 1846-1946 (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1994). De la Cruz also appeared in films and received a FAMAS Best Supporting Actress Award in 1953. The Filipino dresss butterfly sleeves and abac fabric made of banana tree fibers (also called Manila hemp) were considered impractical for the modern workplace. Mabuti na lang at broad-minded ako at nalalaman ko ang tulong na ginagawa niya sa mahihirap at sa mga manggagawa. At age fifteen, de la Rama had her first opportunity to complicate the figure of the demure Filipina maiden when she made her debut in Dalagang Bukid in 1917. She was also at the forefront of introducing Filipino culture to foreign audiences. Fictional representations of the Filipina as the heroine often relied on the ideal good woman archetype or on the moral redemption of the good girl-turned-bad. Images of meek and subservient women abound in early twentieth century Tagalog literature, which led literary historian and critic Soledad Reyes to comment on the recurring portrayal of the obedient, faithful and self-sacrificing wife who suffers in silence even when confronted with her husbands infidelities.Footnote12 The characterizations of women in Tagalog sarsuwelas, on the other hand, reflected differing attitudes and responses to modernization in the Philippines. 64 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 224. To them, the American characteristics deemed feminine were conflated with the modern woman: English-speaking, university-educated, a professional or a clubwoman active in civic work, and by the 1920s, a suffragist. Newspaper Clippings Folder 3, Atang de la Rama Collection, National Library of the Philippines (http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/clippings/NLPADB00811486/datejpg1.htm, 7). So far, only one award for literature has been granted, Edith Tiempo (1999), and none for visual arts and film. 45 El Poder del Kundiman, Philippines Free Press (August 21, 1926). The Queen of the Kundiman, at once a striking presence on the popular stages of Manila and beyond, demands that her performance be taken seriously. Upon landing in a job she, however, either chooses to be financially independent of her husband (this usually happens when relations of husband and wife are [estranged]) or to remain a dependent of the husband.Footnote66. For dance: Francisca Aquino (1973), Leonor Goquingco (1976), Lucrecia Urtula (1988), and Alice Reyes (2014); for music: Jovita Fuentes (1976), Lucrecia Kasilag (1988), and Andrea Veneracion (1999); for theater: Daisy Avellana (1999) and Amelia Lapea-Bonifacio (2018). She died on July 11, 1991 in the Philippines. She did this twice already and she hopes to continue doing so until all who comes to watch her learns to behave properly.Footnote54. The intricate folding of the panuelo is in itself an art, and it has been a constant source of wonder among foreigners. Register a free Taylor & Francis Online account today to boost your research and gain these benefits: Creative Authorship and the Filipina Diva Atang de la Rama. De la Ramas performances were at once sources of musical authorship and powerful testaments to womens creative work that has long been overlooked in the historiography of Philippine music and culture. This juxtaposition of urban and rural highlighted the ideals of Filipino women being challenged by the corrupting influences of foreign liberal views, often embodied in the character of the bailarina who navigated the world of cabarets (kabaret in the Tagalog scripts) and dance halls in Manilas nightlife. As Jun Cruz Reyes has suggested, it is possible that Hernandez became more politically active because of de la Rama, not the other way around.Footnote69 Such a commentary points to the generative work done by women like de la Rama that often remain unacknowledged in histories of Philippine culture. I would also like to thank Journal of Musicological Research editor Hilary Poriss and the journals anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback. By the late 1920s, the traje de mestiza would evolve into the terno, a garment with a more streamlined design and prominent butterfly sleeves.Footnote60 The terno became the symbolic national dress worn by women in public and in various civic organizations. 73 De la Rama penned several sarsuwela scripts including Dalagang Silanganan (Maid of the East), Diwata ng Ipugaw (Fairy of Ifugao), and Anak ni Eba (Daughter of Eve). For more information please visit our Permissions help page. At the age of 15, she starred in the sarsuela Dalagang Bukid, where she became known for singing the song "Nabasag na Banga". By 1925, de la Cruz was the highest paid . Filipino zarzuelistas continued to perform Spanish repertoire at the same time that sarsuwelas in Tagalog and other local Philippine languages were on the rise at the turn of the twentieth century.