Read full biography. Castros remarks on the artists rendition of Awit ng Pagkahibang and the reactions it elicited from the audience drives home the centrality of performance in the conception of a musical and theatrical work. 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. Original text: Kung napupuri at kinagigiliwan ang Maria Luisa, ang masasabi ko, bilang awtor, ay utang kay Atang de la Rama na isang tunay na himala sa pagtupad ng kanyang papel simula sa unang bahagi ng dula at hanggang sa wakas lalo noong inaawit niya ang awit ng pagkahibang Hesus Naririnig sa lahat ng dako nang dulaan ang iyakan ng mga manonood at ang mga piping buntong -hininga ng damdaming nakukuyom sa kanilang mga puso.. 4 Over three hundred years of Spanish colonial occupation in the Philippines ended with the Philippine Revolution (1896-1898) and the Treaty of Paris of 1898. 2 (2010): 35988, at 361. She is hailed as the Queen of Kundiman in 1979 at the tender age of 79. 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. See Tiongson, Atang de la Rama, 31. Si Adan sa Paraiso, Plays and Short Stories Folder, Atang de la Rama Collection, National Library of the Philippines (http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00311420/datejpg1.htm). De la Rama dancing to the foxtrot points to the popularity of the dance genre in the Philippines around the same time as the sarsuwelas premiere. 50 Nick Deocampo, Film: American Influences on Philippine Cinema (Mandaluyong, Philippines: Anvil, 2017), 519. Such standardization of the classical kundiman includes a slow triple meter and a three-part form structure (the first two sections set in minor and the final section in the parallel major), which mirror the poetic narrative of anti-colonial struggle.Footnote41. It is good that I am broad-minded and I knew that he helped the poor and the workers. I am especially indebted to Pamela Potter, Christi-Anne Castro, Susan Cook, Anne Shreffler, Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Elisabeth Reisinger, David Miller, and Frederick Schenker. Yet throughout her life, de la Rama also actively took part in civic organizing, particularly for womens causes. occupation of the Philippines, Atang de la Wrote short stories in Tagalog Prima Donna of Filipino. The Filipino dresss butterfly sleeves and abac fabric made of banana tree fibers (also called Manila hemp) were considered impractical for the modern workplace. The perception that suffragists also had strong support from American colonial officials (such as Governor General Francis Burton Harrison) added to the political tensions. 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. 3 (1993): 32043; and Nicanor Tiongson, A Short History of the Philippine Sarsuwela (1879-2009), Philippine Humanities Review: Sarsuwela 11, no. Academics echoed similar critiques. In 1979, she was hailed as Queen of Kundiman, and in 1987, she was awarded as National Artist for Theater and Music. Breaking down stereotypes: The divas voice, On the multiple stages of popular entertainment, Creating Filipina nationalism: The divas image, https://doi.org/10.1080/01411896.2021.1992595, https://www.flickr.com/photos/9307819@N05/2544474500/in/photostream/, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/clippings/NLPADB00811486/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/NL02/NLPADGD40850fd/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00311420/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00111373/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00111378/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/home.htm, Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health. 68 Atang de la Rama: Sarsuwela Star, Philippine Panorama (August 28, 1983). 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. Atang de la Rama Collection: Manuscripts Home: Contents; Personal Papers -- Amado V. Hernanadez . 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. During the American. Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? 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. : Defining The Filipino Woman in Colonial Philippines, in Womens Suffrage in Asia: Gender, Nationalism and Democracy, eds. 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. National Commission for Culture and the Arts. 25 Schenker, Empire of Syncopation, 25657. People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. 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. The bilingual (English and Spanish) magazine, edited by Filipino suffragist Trining Fernandez-Legarda, promoted itself as devoted to the best traditions of the Filipino home and the progress of the women in the Philippines. Although the magazine published many articles dedicated to family life and domesticity, it also included features and commentary that encouraged women to go out of the home in order to become better wives and mothers; moreover, its editorial board explicitly advocated for womens suffrage during the 1920s and 1930s.Footnote65 The (uncaptioned) cover photo links de la Rama with her iconic role by juxtaposing her headshot with a full profile of her as the dalagang bukid. Her cover photo is framed by texts that point to the magazines multiple strategies for advancing womens progress within the confines of homemaking as well as in seeking full participation in civic life. Second, I chart her rise to stardom alongside the emerging political voice of the womens movement in the 1920s and 1930s to highlight how de la Rama helped create a robust Filipina nationalism through her work and image as a performer. As such, her work serves as a critical example of an artists rewriting of gendered identities embedded in the text and music. 56 Gino Gonzales, Mark Lewis Higgins, Sandra B. Castro, Ramon N. Villegas, and Jo Ann Bitagcol, Fashionable Filipinas: An Evolution of the Philippine National Dress in Photographs, 18601960 (Makati City, Philippines: Slims Legacy Project, 2015), 280. 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. Original text is in English. One place to begin exploring the case for de la Ramas creative authorship is the characterizations of women that proliferated in Philippine literature and theater in the 1910s, leading up to de la Ramas Dalagang Bukid. Original text: Ay naku! 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. Born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1905, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina by the age of five. 22 The article was derived from a booklet published by Columbia Gramophone Company with a letter written by Sawyer, dated November 23, 1914. Some of the notable composers of this early sarsuwela repertoire were Jos Estella, Juan de Sahagun Hernandez, and Fulgencio Tolentino. 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. On September 4, 1915, a lengthy article on the foxtrot by American ballroom dancer Joan Sawyer appeared in the Manila weekly journal The Independent, complete with detailed instructions and suggestions for which music should accompany the dance.Footnote22 Incorporating a foxtrot in the sarsuwela also points to a standard practice of using globally circulating popular musics in sarsuwela scores. 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. 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. 23 Nicanor Tiongson, Atang de la Rama: Unat Huling Bituin, Liwayway (March 10, 1980). 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. In 1901, for example, a show advertised as a Novelty in Manila was held at the Teatro Zorrilla that included a variety of acts, ragtime numbers, acrobatics, and minstrelsy performances accompanied by a Good American Orchestra. See Doreen Fernandez, Apolonio B. Chua, and Galileo S. Zafra, Bodabil, in Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, 2nd ed., Nicanor Tiongson (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2018). While a few scholars have previously underlined the sexual innuendo in Nabasag ang Banga, the reading of the broken jug as a metaphor for lost virginity had a somewhat contested origin.Footnote19 Indeed, the reception of the songs sexual themes in de la Ramas performance may have prompted Tagalog writer Remigio Mat Castro to remark in 1923 that the playwright Ilagan did not intend any metaphorical messages for the original song but instead meant for it to be taken literally.Footnote20 In his compilation of short stories, Nabasag ang Banga?, Castro borrows the popular song title and, in his introduction, insists that nabasag ang banga acquired its metaphorical meaning outside of the context of the sarsuwela. 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. Guerrero. The second in the list is Punyal ni Rosa with 366 performances. Vaudevilles early beginnings in the Philippines can be traced to a variety of theatrical entertainment by visiting American and European troupes in Manila in the late nineteenth century. Confident in her languid disregard for the composers melody, she renders a playful, flirtatious version of the song. 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. Atang Dela Rama is a national artist for theater and music queen of kundiman. 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. 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. De la Ramas long career richly illustrates the power of the female voice in shattering gendered and prescriptive notions of Filipino nationalism that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s amidst anxieties over the Americanization of Filipino culture. 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 . The National Artists of the Philippines. 49 Enriquez, Appropriation of Colonial Broadcasting, 10910. His 1914 work Ang Tatlong Babae (The Three Women), for example, reinforced the primary role of women as homemakers in projecting the ideal and patriotic image of the Filipina. 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. 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. 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. The 1919 silent-film version of Dalagang Bukid, considered the first film largely produced and directed in the Philippines by Filipinos, capitalized on de la Ramas early success onstage as much as it propelled her career forward. Early life . She frequently performed at rallies and events organized by various womens groups like Panitik Kababaihan (a womens literary society), Kaisahan ng Kababaihan sa Pilipinas (where she served as president), the Women Auxiliary of the Confederation of Labor Organization, and the Ladies Association in her hometown of Gagalangin, Tondo. For other contemporary academic critiques to jazz, see Keppy, Tales of Southeast Asias Jazz Age, 8283. By closing this message, you are consenting to our use of cookies. 71 De la Rama was awarded the National Artist Award for theater and music. De la Ramas performances transformed the kundiman into a particularly potent musical and cultural symbol of Filipino identity. 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. 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). Figure 2. 38 Santiago, The Development of Music in the Philippine Islands, 516. TV Shows. 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. See Lacnico-Buenaventura, The Theater in Manila, 88. For more information please visit our Permissions help page. Entertainers and the Making of the Pacific Circuit, 1850-1890, (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2010), 1516. Cultural Center of the Philippines. 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. Atang de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. The works of Severino Reyes (18611942), one of the foremost playwrights of the Tagalog sarsuwela, are exemplary. The iconic image of de la Rama as dalagang bukid also likely inspired the well-known dalagang Filipina subject found in painter Fernando Amorsolos romantic-realist scenes of the idyllic countryside from the 1920s (see Figure 2), with its bandanna-clad young woman who bears some likeness to de la Ramas 1919 portrait. theather. 9 See Denise Cruz, Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern Filipina (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012); Genevieve A. Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism: Body, Nation, Empire (PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014); Mina Roces, Is the Suffragist an American Colonial Construct? Atang dela Rama Born Honorata de la Rama January 11, 1905 Tondo, Manila, Philippine Islands Died July 11, 1991 (aged 86) Manila, Philippines Occupation Filipino singer and actress Years active 1919-1956 Spouse(s) Amado V. Hernandez Awards National Artist for Theater and Music 1987 Atang de la Rama was born in Tondo, Manila on January 11, 1905. But de la Ramas success in Dalagang Bukid ushered in a renewal of the lyrical stage with works by other emerging playwrights such as Precioso Palmas Paglipas ng Dilim (After the Darkness, 1920), Julian Cruz Balmacedas Sa Bunganga ng Pating (In the Sharks Jaws, 1921), and Servando de los Angeless Alamat ng Nayon (Legend of the Town, 1925). Theater historian Nicanor Tiongson underscores the importance of Ignacio and de la Ramas relationship, and how he helped launch her career by guaranteeing her roles in sarsuwelas that he was commissioned to write.Footnote23 Yet it was also plausible that Ignacios career and the entire Tagalog sarsuwela scene in Manila took an upward turn because of de la Ramas successful debut in Dalagang Bukid. Cultural Center of the Philippines. As of this writing, there are 7 National Artist for Theater awardees. In the closing verse, de la Rama performs with more urgency as the text describes the dance floor as a heaven where the bailarina sings of her dreams. These concerns may have been reflecting the dynamics of De la Ramas own marriage to the poet and labor leader Amado Hernandez. Nicanor G. Tiongson. 28 In Sesangs first entrance at the opening party scene, for example, the libretto instructs the actor to appear in a dress dcolletage (nakabestidong escotado). This essay focuses on the career of Honorata Atang de la Rama on the popular sarsuwela and vaudeville stages during the period of American colonization in the Philippines. Her performances on the sarsuwela stage refashioned stereotypical female characters. 16 In his first solo, Romansa, Cipriano refers to Angelita as his banal na Birhen (holy Virgin [Mary]). 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. Her distinctive voice, stage presence, and memorable portrayal of the country maiden inspired the creation of a new repertoire of Tagalog sarsuwelas and gave momentum to the lyrical stage, just as other types of entertainment like vaudeville and cinema were gaining popularity in the Philippines in the early 1920s. Louise Edwards and Mina Roces (London; New York, NY: Taylor and Francis, 2004), 2458.
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