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. Karen Henson (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 1123, at 20. De la Rama on the front cover of The Womans Outlook (July 1926 Issue). De la Rama died on July 11, 1991. 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. This created what Roces considers a dilemma in which Filipina suffragists supported the nationalist project while lobbying for a (male-dominated) government that would only serve to disenfranchise them. 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? 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. De la Rama was a frequent performer in the Savoy Nifties, a prominent vaudeville act in Manila. Postwar productions changed the title to Ang Masayang Dalaga (The Happy Maiden), which reflects a subtler variation of the dalagang haliparot type. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. 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. PHILCLASSIC CHANNEL 7.74K subscribers Honorata "Atang" Dela Rama (1905-1991) National Artist for Theater and Music (1987) Honorata "Atang" Dela Rama was formally honored as the Queen of. Some of the notable composers of this early sarsuwela repertoire were Jos Estella, Juan de Sahagun Hernandez, and Fulgencio Tolentino. Fernando Amorsolos Campesina (Peasant, 1927). Angelitas parents plan to marry her off to the much older and wealthy loan shark Don Silvestre. See Doreen Fernandez, Zarzuela to Sarswela: Indigenization and Transformation, Philippine Studies 41, no. 42 The brief biographical sketch included in the research guide to the Atang de la Rama Collection at the National Library of the Philippines mentions her premiering the iconic song in 1924 at a workers rally (http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/NL02/NLPADGD40850fd/datejpg1.htm, 5). 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. Movies. 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. 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]. De la Ramas personal writings hint that she engaged directly in this balancing act between private and public life. 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. Early life . 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". That was why Atang de la Ramas pocket was always empty [Emphasis in the original].Footnote68. 38 Santiago, The Development of Music in the Philippine Islands, 516. No recording of this song has so far materialized, but reviews of the sarsuwela underline the effectiveness of de la Ramas performance. To request a reprint or commercial or derivative permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below. "Atang" de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. In the program for the 1919 benefit production of Dalagang Bukid, de la Rama is pictured wearing a balintawak dress (see Figure 1). 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. Order of National Artists of the Philippines, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atang_de_la_Rama&oldid=1130385614, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 29 December 2022, at 22:45. Reflecting on the domestic and economic concerns of the working woman, she commented: It is not for selfish motives that a Filipino woman works and gets a job but it is because of the burning love she has for the poor suffering husband and the spirit of cooperation that compels her to do so. Confident in her languid disregard for the composers melody, she renders a playful, flirtatious version of the song. 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. 3099067 12 (2004): 75106, at 9798. 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. 50 Nick Deocampo, Film: American Influences on Philippine Cinema (Mandaluyong, Philippines: Anvil, 2017), 519. In 1926, de la Rama performed with the Manila bandmaster Andres Baclig and his jazz band, the Manila Syncopators, in Honolulu.Footnote44 An account of de la Ramas travels abroad published in the Philippines Free Press highlighted the nationalist pride that such performances engendered and the critic reported at length about de la Ramas appearances as a goodwill mission of patriotic art.Footnote45 In the same 1926 tour, de la Rama made stops in Hong Kong and Yokohama, Japan prior to landing in Hawaii. 61 Roces, Is the Suffragist an American Colonial Construct, 45. De la Ramas performances transformed the kundiman into a particularly potent musical and cultural symbol of Filipino identity. 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. 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. Finding that his daughter has become pregnant out of wedlock, Justo inflicts the cruelest of punishments: he gives away her newborn daughter. 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. She was widowed in 1970 In 1970, at the age of 68, her husband, Amado V. Hernandez, passed away. At the age of 14, Atang played as lead role in a sarsuela entitled "Dalagang Bukid" which was a hit during 1919. She soon became a solo headliner, performing in Manila's largest theaters such as the Savoy, the Palace, and the Lux. The Filipino dresss butterfly sleeves and abac fabric made of banana tree fibers (also called Manila hemp) were considered impractical for the modern workplace. 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. 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. She died on 11 July 1991 in the Philippines. 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. She firmly believed . Besides here, his angelic voice also came . Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. Nicanor Tiongson (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2018). [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. Beyond the sarsuwela stage, de la Ramas work in vaudeville, film, and radio complicate perceptions of a Filipino culture wholly subject to the cultural logics of American colonialism. In the final repetition of the songs chorus, de la Rama plays out affective vocal nuances with the pronounced slowness of her delivery. 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. 66 Personal Papers, Statements, and Reports Folder, Atang de la Rama Collection, National Library of the Philippines (http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00111373/datejpg1.htm, 4). 21 Tiongson, Atang de la Rama, 59; Fernandez, Zarzuela to Sarswela, 331. Whether Ilagan intended the double entendre or not, it is likely that de la Ramas rendition and continued performance of the song was the true source for the broken jug euphemism. 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. Atang de la Rama was born in Tondo Manila on January 11 1902. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. In his biography of Hernandez, Jun Cruz Reyes tells the story of two talented and well-known artists who were brought together on the stages of Tagalog poetry and drama. 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. 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]. 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). Perhaps it is only theater royalty who could get away with schooling their public. 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. Her real . Film historian Nick Deocampo remarks how her debut on the sarsuwela stage as dalagang bukid convinced the films director, Jose Nepomuceno, to cast her. 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.
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