De la Rama as dalagang bukid on the program cover for the December 7, 1919 benefit performance. Guerrero. The National Artists of the Philippines. Queen of the Kundiman and. 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. Although this pairing was at times fraught with rumors of domestic quarrels, de la Rama and Hernandez remained together, even after Hernandez was imprisoned for six years in the 1950s on charges of rebellion and associations with the communist movement.Footnote67 In one of her more candid postwar interviews, de la Rama spoke of how she supported the social causes that her husband championed: Oh, Ka Amado was a labor leader, councilor, poet, writer. He was everything that didnt make money. Cultural Center of the Philippines. Father and mother/At one time quarreled /, Because of the bibingka/Father did not want it/Sticky , Register to receive personalised research and resources by email. 24 See Peter Keppy, Tales of the Southeast Asian Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians and Popular Culture, 19201936 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2019); also Frederick J. Schenker, Empire of Syncopation: Music, Race, and Labor in Colonial Asias Jazz Age (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2016). Movies. The Order of National Artists (Orden ng Pambansang Alagad ng Sining) is the highest national recognition given to Filipino individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine arts; namely, Music, Dance, Theater . 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. She finds it impossible to keep on a balanced budget unless she helps her partner in lifethat is, she gets a job. 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 Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. Film historian Nick Deocampo remarks how her debut on the sarsuwela stage as dalagang bukid convinced the films director, Jose Nepomuceno, to cast her. 3099067 Lahat na lang ng di mapagkakakitaan, nasa kanya na. 68 Atang de la Rama: Sarsuwela Star, Philippine Panorama (August 28, 1983). In this article, I trace de la Ramas creative authorship through analyses of her performances onstage and offstage, where the aural and visual aspects of her role as Filipina diva come together. This essay examines the role of Atang de la Rama in the development of the Tagalog sarsuwela and in the emerging popular entertainment industry in the Philippines in order to make a claim about women in performance as primary creators of Filipino culture and identity. 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. occupation of the Philippines, Atang de la Wrote short stories in Tagalog Prima Donna of Filipino. 2 (2010): 35988, at 361. Finding that his daughter has become pregnant out of wedlock, Justo inflicts the cruelest of punishments: he gives away her newborn daughter. In the recording, the song is introduced with a short comedic dialogue in which de la Rama plays the role of a vendor who sells rice cakes to the tenor Vicente Ocampo, who then tries to squirm out of paying for the bibingka he had just tasted. At the age of 14, Atang played as lead role in a sarsuela entitled "Dalagang Bukid" which was a hit during 1919. 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]. 35 El Declinar del Teatro Nativo, La Vanguardia (March 5, 1932). 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. 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). Atang de la Rama was born in Tondo Manila on January 11 1902. She was widowed in 1970 In 1970, at the age of 68, her husband, Amado V. Hernandez, passed away. The Order of National Artists of the Philippines (Filipino: Orden ng mga Pambansang Alagad ng Sining ng Pilipinas) is an order bestowed by the Philippines on Filipinos who have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine art.Members of the Order are known as National Artists.Originally instituted as an Award, it was elevated to the status of an order in 2003. Career By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina. 31 Franco Vera Reyes, Taliba (April 26, 1930). Of the 73 honorees since the awards reception in 1972, de la Rama is among only 11 women.Footnote71 Even in these later decades of her life, de la Rama presented herself in her trademark terno, a picture of grace with a little bit of spunk, not unlike her debut character half a century ago. Honorata "Atang" Dela Rama was formally honored as the Queen of Kundiman in 1979, then already 74 years old singing the same song ("Nabasag na Banga") that she sang as a 15-year old girl in the sarsuela "Dalagang Bukid". 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). National Commission for Culture and the Arts. 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). However, Angelita is forced by her parents to marry a wealthy loan shark, Don Silvestre, as they need money to pay for their gambling habit and other vices. 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. Here, I use the term voice to mean two things: first, the distinctiveness of de la Ramas own voice, mediated through sound recordings and contemporary reviews, reinscribes the act of performance as a necessary locus of authorship traditionally reserved for (male) playwrights and composers. 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. Atang Dela Rama was born on 11 January 1905 in Manila, Philippines. It came to represent idealized images of Filipina femininity found in the sarsuwelas.Footnote56 This photo invites further reading on how de la Ramas own image carries a powerful influence separate from that created for her by the sarsuwelas authors. and National Commission for Culture and the Arts. This short song features de la Ramas use of vocal slides and a gruff timbre that intensifies as she sings the final verse: What seemed like an innocent and playful depiction of the mundane becomes tinged with innuendo as de la Ramas rendition of the final verse elicits boisterous and knowing laughter from her partner Ocampo. 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. [3], During the American occupation of the Philippines, Atang de la Rama fought for the dominance of the kundiman, an important Philippine folk song, and the sarsuela, which is a musical play that focused on contemporary Filipino issues such as usury, cockfighting, and colonial mentality. In the latter part of this essay, I pair my analyses of de la Ramas musical voice with her strong visual presence in commercial photography and print media during the 1920s and 1930s. In the first line of the chorus, she prolongs the opening word halina (come hither), adding a subtle allure as she sings of a heart-stopping kiss and instructs her partner not to be timid in touching her. 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. Her parents came from Negros Occidental. 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. During the American. Such self-fashioning carried political significance, especially during the resurgence of nationalism and in the emerging womens movement during the 1920s and 1930s in the Philippines. Atang de la Rama Collection: Manuscripts Home: Contents; Personal Papers -- Amado V. Hernanadez . The characteristic bitin or prolonged delivery of cadential phrase endings mentioned earlier, for example, echo vocal techniques heard in de la Ramas own recordings. She was married to National Artist for Literature, Amado V. Hernandez. I am not arguing that de la Ramas creative power and influence relies on her performance alone and that her work as an artist occludes her output as a writer: de la Rama left a rich and resonant archive of her original drafts of short stories, comedic sketches, personal essays, and sarsuwela librettos, evidence of a thriving intellectual life that accompanied her career in performance.Footnote73 Instead, what I am suggesting is that the artist herself has the authority over her own performancein all its aural and visual manifestationsfleshing out alternative ways of thinking about and listening to a musical and theatrical work. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina. Original text is in English. 40 One of the earliest sources of the kundiman is found in Jos Honorato Lozanos lbum: Vistas de las Yslas Filipinas y Trages de sus Abitantes 1847, which featured two transcriptions of cundiman songs and an illustration of a scene with a dancing couple accompanied by a small ensemble of string and wind instruments. 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. See Lacnico-Buenaventura, The Theater in Manila, 88. At the age of 15, she starred in . I am especially indebted to Pamela Potter, Christi-Anne Castro, Susan Cook, Anne Shreffler, Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Elisabeth Reisinger, David Miller, and Frederick Schenker. Orphaned at an early age, she grew up under the care of an elder sister who was married to a zarzuela composer where she was constantly exposed to the zarzuela. Ang Kiri is an example of a subset of sarsuwelas from this period that contrasted urban cosmopolitan Manila with the idyllic countryside. Following her leading role debut in Dalagang Bukid, de la Rama had gained a reputation that quickly spread among the theater-going public of Manila. De la Cruz also appeared in films and received a FAMAS Best Supporting Actress Award in 1953. Claiming to reproduce first-hand impressions from a letter by de la Rama, the Philippine Free Press article mentioned that she met, among others, Artemio Ricarte, a popular Filipino general during the 1896 Revolution against Spain and the Philippine-American War, who was living in exile in Japan for his role in the fight for Philippine independence. 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. Sawyer also campaigned for womens suffrage during this period and, as dance and theater historian Julie Malnig argues, linked the rhetoric of physical and psychological progress to dance and to womens new-found freedoms. See Julie Malnig, Two-Stepping to Glory: Social Dance and the Rhetoric of Social Mobility, Etnofoor 10, no. 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. 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. Sarsuwela characters ran the gamut of stereotypes, from the virtuous and chaste Filipina, the perpetual dalagang bukid, to the manipulative flirt depicted as a product of rapid urban modernization. Rama fought for the dominance of the such as: kundiman, an important Philippine folk song, Theater (1968) and the sarsuela, which is a musical play that Doon sa Dakong Timog. At the end of this rendition, one is left with the distinct impression that she is mischievously waiting to tip over and break the jar herself.Footnote18. Yet throughout her life, de la Rama also actively took part in civic organizing, particularly for womens causes. It is this sense of authorship that Hilary Poriss similarly argues for the critical work of prima donnas of the nineteenth century in their practice of altering operatic scores in performance, thereby challenging conceptions of authenticity of a given musical work.Footnote8 While Abbate and Poriss comment largely on the history and performance of European opera, such theorizations of the voice and of the performing artist are particularly helpful in teasing out the ways in which de la Ramas voice and stage presence position her as co-creator of sarsuwelas.