Her consistent pairing of the Filipino dress, the terno, with global beauty trends in makeup and hairstyles revealed a self-fashioning practice that was simultaneously modern and traditional, Filipino and cosmopolitan. Singing competitions such as the Jazz and Kundiman Championship were also quite popular during the 1920s and were instrumental in presenting the genre as Filipino in contradistinction to jazz. In these contests, Jazz Girls were pitted against Lady Kundimans, which featured Atang de la Rama and Maggie Calloway, a silent film star in the late 1920s.Footnote43 Composers of this period took a serious interest in creating kundimans precisely because of the very voices that opened up the genre to a wider audience and gave life to their compositions. Besides here, his angelic voice also came . Siya pa rin ang Atang de la Rama ng napabantog na Dalagang Bukid., 32 Remigio Mat Castro, Pagkakaisa (January 12, 1930). A recording of the song, set in the lilting danza rhythm, begins with a subdued rendition by de la Rama of the opening verse as Sesang sadly reminisces about her cabaret days. 27 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 11011. The second in the list is Punyal ni Rosa with 366 performances. This position ironically came from the male politicians advocating for independence. 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. 12 Soledad S. Reyes, Representations of Filipino Women in Selected Tagalog Novels (1905-1921), in Feasts and Feats: Festschrift for Doreen G. Fernandez, eds. De la Ramas personal writings hint that she engaged directly in this balancing act between private and public life. 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. These and most of the other sarsuwelas in which de la Rama performed were composed by Leon Ignacio, the foremost sarsuwela composer of the 1920s. She was especially popular in Hawaii, home to a large population of Filipinos who had been recruited to work in the sugar cane plantations as early as 1906. theather. 36 Ang Wika at mga Tugtugin, Bagong Lipang Kalabaw (October 7, 1922). Although one can read a certain conservatism in de la Ramas disdain for the knee-length skirt, her insistence on wearing the terno became an integral part of her performing her own femininity and Filipino identity. Guerrero. In 1987 she was inducted into the pantheon of National Artists in the Philippines, the highest award for arts and culture given by the national government. 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. At the age of 15, she starred in the sarsuela Dalagang Bukid, where she became known for singing the song "Nabasag na Banga". 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. 54 Ignacio Manlapaz, Philippines Herald (April 1934). 5 The playwright Severino Reyes was among the early advocates of the Tagalog sarsuwela who produced didactic works that were critical of Spanish colonialism. Registered in England & Wales No. Atang Dela Rama is a national artist for theater and music queen of kundiman. 11 Andrew N. Weintraub and Bart Barendregt, eds., Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2017), 2. 33 See also Matthew Wittman, Empire of Culture: U.S. Atang Dela Rama Angelita Mar I. Esmeralda Director Jose Nepomuceno Writers Leon Ignacio (story) Hermogenes Ilagan (story) All cast & crew Production, box office & more at IMDbPro Storyline Edit Did you know Trivia Considered as the first Filipino movie made. As Andrew N. Weintraub and Bart Barendregt have remarked, the ascendancy of women as performers paralleled, and in some cases generated, developments in wider society such as suffrage, social and sexual liberation, and women as business entrepreneurs and independent income earners and as models for new lifestyles.Footnote11 De la Ramas performing career on the multiple stages of musical theater and popular entertainment in the Philippines richly illustrates this dynamic. Also, Renato Lucas, A Preliminary Annotation of Selected Discography by Filipino Artists, 19131946, Journal of the Arts, Culture, and the Humanities 3, no. For more information please visit our Permissions help page. 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. The woman general, Heneral Emilia, is an unmistakable reference to Emilio Aguinaldo (18691964), a general during the Philippine Revolution against Spain and the first Filipino president. I would also like to thank Journal of Musicological Research editor Hilary Poriss and the journals anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback. 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. At the age of 15, she starred in the sarsuela Dalagang Bukid, where she became known for singing the song "Nabasag na Banga". A survey of her extant recordings yields a discography of thirty-five Tagalog songs, mostly for Columbia records, from the 1920s to the late 1930s.Footnote48 A number of these songs, like Nabasag ang Banga and Masayang Dalaga, originate in sarsuwelas while others are Tagalog folk and novelty songs and duets recorded with Vicente Ocampo. 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. Among the highlights of the production was the song performed by de la Rama, Awit ng Pagkahibang (Delirium Song) in the second act. The centennial of local movies is celebrated this year, 2019.. Yet throughout her life, de la Rama also actively took part in civic organizing, particularly for womens causes. In the local vaudeville circuit, for instance, she performed novelty songs in English and popular excerpts from Italian operas, including duets with the Italian baritone Mario Padovani. She is hailed as the Queen of Kundiman in 1979 at the tender age of 79. Cultural Center of the Philippines. Original text: Atang, sta es la primera vez desde hace no s cuanto tiempo que oigo un kundiman nuestro. 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. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina.At the age of 15, she starred in the . Si Ka Amado, labor leader, konsehal, makata, manunulat. People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. De la Cruz also appeared in films and received a FAMAS Best Supporting Actress Award in 1953. From de la Ramas nuanced characterizations of the virginal and idealized country maiden to the urbanized and flirtatious bailarina or cabaret dancer, her vocal command and onstage presence revolutionized the Tagalog sarsuwela scene in Manila from the 1920s through the prewar years. I use the feminine form Filipina to mean Filipino women and, more specifically, the work of de la Rama in relation to the history of cultural nationalism in the Philippines. 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. Contemporary accounts portray de la Rama as a commanding authority on the theatrical stage. De la Rama.Footnote2. I am especially indebted to Pamela Potter, Christi-Anne Castro, Susan Cook, Anne Shreffler, Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Elisabeth Reisinger, David Miller, and Frederick Schenker. Original text: Huwag namang daramdamin ng maraming artistang lumalabas sa Maria Luisa ay utang sa pagtupad ng Mutya ng Dulaang Tagalog ang lalong malaking bahagi ng tagumpay ng sarsuewlang ito. 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. At the age of 15, she starred in . 2 (2010): 14986. 61 Roces, Is the Suffragist an American Colonial Construct, 45. 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. In a tennis court scene showing the new types of social spaces that women could inhabit, Sesang appears wearing sports attire as she hangs out with her suitors. 70 Her postwar film credits include Batong Buhay (1950), Salome (1952), Siga, Siga (1953), Rigiding (1954), Ang Buhay at Pag-ibig ni Dr. Jose Rizal (1955). De la Rama as dalagang bukid on the program cover for the December 7, 1919 benefit performance. Following the Second World War, de la Rama continued to star in film and she hosted her own radio show in the 1950s.Footnote70 In the 1960s and 1970s, moreover, she contributed significantly to the restaging of prewar sarsuwelas and she availed herself freely as a resource for younger performers and theater companies. In the April 26, 1930 issue of the Tagalog daily Taliba, for example, Franco Vera Reyes wrote, I hope the many artists who starred in Maria Luisa will not be offended by this but they owe a huge part of the zarzuelas success to the muse of the Tagalog drama [Mutya ng Dulaang Tagalog]. Queen of the Kundiman and. al., Fashionable Filipinas, 141. In her introduction to an essay collection on technology and the figure of the diva, musicologist Karen Henson remarks on how the diva is created when sopranos, audience members and one or more technologies come together. In this process, the visual replaces the aural and refutes the notion that the divas authenticity only resides in the pure power of the voice and vocal expression.Footnote55 De la Ramas celebrity photographs became a crucial medium in which her images circulated, creating a diverse set of audiences beyond those who witnessed her on the theatrical stage. De la Ramas Angelita sheds the image of the delicate country girl who, as the common Tagalog idiom implies, cannot break a plate (di makabasag pinggan). Their repartee turns into de la Rama singing about the method of cooking the rice cake with fire below and on top and how her bibingka is much sought after for its extra stickiness and its full toppings of egg and cheese. Motoe Terami-Wada also mentions de la Ramas stage engagements in 1943 during the Japanese Occupation where she led sarsuwela performances through the auspices of the organization Musical Philippines. As she embarked on her Hawaii tour, she was featured on the front page of the July 1926 issue of The Womans Outlook, a magazine that was dedicated to promoting womens progress during the 1920s (see Figure 4). Moreover, de la Ramas celebrity status did not rely solely on her vocal ability, but also on the visual aspects of her performances on- and offstage. Clutario notes how the Tagalog word kiri had become synonymous with the flapper, one of the dominant symbols of Filipina modernity in the late 1920s.Footnote27 This particular strain of Filipina modernity corresponds to the ways in which new fashion and beauty regimens became strongly tied to perceptions and subsequent depictions of the babae ngayon (woman of today), sexually liberated in stark contrast to the ideal Filipina. 20 Remigio Mat Castro, Nabasag ang Banga? Courtesy of the National Library of the Philippines, As Roces further points out, moreover, a complex politics of dress was carried out by the local suffragists, who purposefully used the traje de mestiza or terno in their civic-oriented work to counter those who perceived the movement as yet another form of colonial expansion. 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]. For de la Rama, the terno became an essential component of her musical performances for both local and international audiences: I have always believed that the panuelo is an indispensable part of the Filipino terno and that without it the terno is incomplete. De la Ramas voice resonates through the writers own recollection as it vividly creates the experience of the sarsuwela for its audience. 22 The article was derived from a booklet published by Columbia Gramophone Company with a letter written by Sawyer, dated November 23, 1914. Within this tension between the urban and the rural, representations of women often invoked expectations of Filipina femininity that conveyed a nostalgia for the pastoral lifestyle, a reaction to perceived encroachments of the foreign and the modern onto traditional Filipino values. 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. 10 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 2. The National Artists of the Philippines. p. 97-109. and National Commission for Culture and the Arts. For more on the history of the U.S. empire the Philippines, see Paul Kramer, Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Newspaper reviews between 1922 and 1925 remark on her performance of Tagalog song repertory, especially of kundiman songs, which contributed to her earning the moniker Queen of the Kundiman.Footnote39 While the kundiman has a long history that dates back to the early nineteenth century, it was during the 1920s that the genre became widely associated with its characteristic patriotic sentimentality and themes of national longing.Footnote40 Images of the ideal woman and the virtuous Filipina, often standing in as a symbol for the longed-for independent motherland, recur in many kundimans. 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. Atang de la Ramas singular voice, heard on the multiple stages of popular entertainment, asserts its own kind of authorship that challenges the common conception that creativity is the exclusive domain of the playwright or composer. Menu. She soon became a solo headliner, performing in Manila's largest theaters such as the Savoy, the Palace, and the Lux. 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. [1] Atang de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. She died on 11 July 1991 in the Philippines. Here, she is deliberate in her pauses and vocal slidescommonly referred to in Filipino music parlance as bitin and hagodand leaves the listener with a sense of vertiginous hanging just before the final cadence. Just as the womens movement was gaining ground in the Philippines, de la Rama harnessed the power of the visual, constructing her celebrity as much from her image as a professional and cosmopolitan artist as from her iconic status as the dalagang bukid.. Original text is in English. Confident in her languid disregard for the composers melody, she renders a playful, flirtatious version of the song. 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. She became the very first actress in the very first . Atang dela Rama is billed 'The First Star of Philippine Cinema' as she portrayed the title role in Dalagang Bukid in 1919. Lahat na lang ng di mapagkakakitaan, nasa kanya na. But how can you remain relaxed at home on that night, knowing that Atang celebrates her gala of honor? The local vaudeville or bodabil stageas it was referred to in Tagalogprovided such a space for blurring the boundaries between traditional and modern, old and new. Courtesy of Adlai Lara. The sarsuwela (also labeled in the Tagalog as opereta by its librettist Hermogenes Ilagan) was set to music by de la Ramas brother-in-law Leon Ignacio. De la Rama was a frequent performer in the Savoy Nifties, a prominent vaudeville act in Manila. Adam in Paradise) that is set on an island full of women, all of whom pursued a stranded and hapless man with a mix of enticing dialogs, songs, and comedic repartees.Footnote53 This is a side of de la Ramas stage career that is not well known, one that stands in striking contrast to her reputation as the demure country maiden. Atang Dela Rama on IMDb: Awards, nominations, and wins. Bernardino Buenaventura of Samahang Gabriel (Company Gabriel) rewrote it for the stage with music by Jose Z. Rivera. She was married to National Artist for Literature, Amado V. Hernandez. 35 El Declinar del Teatro Nativo, La Vanguardia (March 5, 1932). By closing this message, you are consenting to our use of cookies. Today marks the 28th death anniversary of the Philippines massive star, Honorata "Atang" de la Rama born on January 11, 1902, and died in 1991. She was an actress, known for Dalagang bukid (1919), Mahiwagang binibini: Ang kiri (1939) and Oriental Blood (1930). She also made an effort to bring the kundiman and sarsuela to the indigenous peoples of the Philippine such as the Igorots, the Aetas, and the Mangyans. As a localized form of the Spanish zarzuela,Footnote3 the sarsuwela flourished in the archipelago through the work of playwrights, composers, and artists who projected the mundane and the political in their everyday colonial experience under occupation by the United States.Footnote4 Early advocates of the sarsuwela envisioned the genre as a vehicle for moral and cultural uplift of its local audience in a bid to establish a national theater.Footnote5 Tagalog-language repertoire from the first decades of the twentieth century ranged from critiques of colonialism and its legacies of blind religiosity and superstition of the native population to various vices such as alcoholism, gambling, and prostitution among Manilas emerging working class. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. While de la Rama is famously associated with her role as the demure dalagang bukid, I call attention to how her versatility as an actor and her dynamic voice allowed for a more nuanced performance that pushed against flat representations of the shy and modest Filipina. The other women awardees largely belonged to performing arts categories. Details Release date September 25, 1919 (Philippines) Country of origin Philippines Her vocal training in a variety of styles including Italian opera combined well with the idiosyncrasies and theatricality of the Tagalog language. For a fascinating study on commemoration, prestige, and nation-building in the National Artist Award in the Philippines, see Neal D. Matherne, Naming the Artist, Composing the Philippines: Listening for the Nation in the National Artist Award, (PhD dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 2014). 3 (1993): 32043, at 331. See Tiongson, Atang de la Rama, 31. 3 Written histories of Spanish zarzuela in the Philippines often start with an account of the staging of Francisco Barbieris Jugar con Fuego, sometime between 1878 and 1879 by Dario Cspedes, who managed a zarzuela company in Spain prior to his arrival in Manila. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina. Another way to consider de la Ramas performance and creation of Filipina nationalism is through the image of the diva and the symbolic power it carried. 26 Sesang is labeled in the libretto as a dalagang haliparot, a descriptor for a young and licentious woman. 19 Doreen Fernandez, Zarzuela to Sarswela: Indigenization and Transformation, Philippine Studies 41, no. 8 Hilary Poriss, Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). See Doreen Fernandez, Zarzuela to Sarswela: Indigenization and Transformation, Philippine Studies 41, no. Cultural Center of the Philippines. [4] She has also been a theatrical producer, writer and talent manager. 15 Susan Thomas, Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havanas Lyric Stage (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 7. 65 Roces, Is the Suffragist an American Colonial Construct, 37. Read full biography. 1 (1981): 7788, at 83. In the drama, Angelita is often referred to as gentle and ladylike; she carries an aura of virtue and innocence about her as she sells flowers in Manilas unsavory cabaret districts.Footnote16. In effect, the magazine made an already familiar face available to a strata of women devoted to Filipina nationalism, encouraging women to take charge of their lives at home and outside of it, and, by extension, in the homeland and abroad. 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. De la Rama was a force to be reckoned with, and hers was an indefatigable presence that persisted in the distinct (but still loosely connected) networks of the sarsuwela stage, vaudeville, film, and radio. He remarks on how the phrase became a popular idiom among the Tagalog-speaking public, who found the phrase more pleasing to the ear and a more appropriate substitute to saying losing ones virginity in public. Personal Papers, Untitle [sic] Folder, Atang de la Rama Collection, National Library of the Philippines (http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00111378/datejpg1.htm, 2). Tamang sagot sa tanong: MUSIC please help me() - studystoph.com 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. 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. 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. 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. In Deocampos words, this decision would ensure patronage for this novelty entertainment that, in the early years of moving pictures, could hardly compete with the immense popularity of theatrical shows.Footnote50 Indeed, it was not only the presence of de la Rama on film that generated new audiences for the medium. 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). The light timbral quality and the open sound of her voice all aid in the clear articulation of the text. 1/2 (1997): 12850, at 141. This approach allows me to situate the sarsuwela stage as part of a growing industry that included vaudeville, early cinema, sound recording, and radio.