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. 72 A typescript account found at the Atang de la Rama Collection listing her appearance in sarsuwela performances puts Dalagang Bukid at the top with a total of 724 performances. 19 Doreen Fernandez, Zarzuela to Sarswela: Indigenization and Transformation, Philippine Studies 41, no. 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. Bernardino Buenaventura of Samahang Gabriel (Company Gabriel) rewrote it for the stage with music by Jose Z. Rivera. 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. 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. At the age of 15, she starred in the sarsuela Dalagang Bukid, where she became known for singing the song "Nabasag na Banga". Angelita and Cipriano are the main protagonists in the sarsuwela. 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. Copies of her comedy sketches includes a short skit entitled Lalake!!! Background Atang de la Rama was born in Tondo, Manila on January 11, 1905. The patriotic anthem Bayan Ko (My Country), perhaps the most famous and enduring kundiman in Philippine music history, was also popularized by de la Rama.Footnote42 Yet standard accounts ignore the critical role she played, instead tracing the development of the kundiman from its origins in a handful of songs created during the Revolutionary period at the turn of the twentieth century to the art songs of the conservatory composers. 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. 22 The article was derived from a booklet published by Columbia Gramophone Company with a letter written by Sawyer, dated November 23, 1914. The National Artists of the Philippines. Si Ka Amado, labor leader, konsehal, makata, manunulat. 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. 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. Wilfredo Ma. No recording of this song has so far materialized, but reviews of the sarsuwela underline the effectiveness of de la Ramas performance.
Honorata "ATANG" dela Rama - Philippine Artists,Traditions and Culture 5 The playwright Severino Reyes was among the early advocates of the Tagalog sarsuwela who produced didactic works that were critical of Spanish colonialism. 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. See Tiongson, Atang de la Rama, 31. Atang de la Rama. 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. 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. It is good that I am broad-minded and I knew that he helped the poor and the workers. 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. De la Ramas performances transformed the kundiman into a particularly potent musical and cultural symbol of Filipino identity. Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. Entertainers and the Making of the Pacific Circuit, 1850-1890, (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2010), 1516. 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. 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.
Atang de La Rama | PDF | Philippines - Scribd group 4 theater it is the direction, performance and/or production design the roster ofnational artists (theater) honorata 'atang' dela rama. 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. 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). 31 Franco Vera Reyes, Taliba (April 26, 1930). By the late 1910s and early 1920s, sarsuwela repertoire mirrored anxieties around the urbanization of Manila in striking contrast to the idyllic rural countryside. To request a reprint or commercial or derivative permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below. Read full biography. 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. Original text: Ay naku! 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. De la Rama was a frequent performer in the Savoy Nifties, a prominent vaudeville act in Manila. p. 97-109. 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. 3 (1993): 32043, at 331.
WATCH: 8 Philippine National Artists for Theater - TheaterFansManila.com This treaty ceded the Philippines (along with Puerto Rico and Guam) to the United States in the aftermath of the Spanish-American war. 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. 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). Honorata "Atang" Marquez de la Rama-Hernandez. 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. She did this twice already and she hopes to continue doing so until all who comes to watch her learns to behave properly.Footnote54.
About: Atang de la Rama - DBpedia 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. The intricate folding of the panuelo is in itself an art, and it has been a constant source of wonder among foreigners. Atang dela Rama was a graduate of BS Pharmacy in 1922.
Atang de la Rama - geni family tree 64 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 224. Film historian Nick Deocampo remarks how her debut on the sarsuwela stage as dalagang bukid convinced the films director, Jose Nepomuceno, to cast her. 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. That was why Atang de la Ramas pocket was always empty [Emphasis in the original].Footnote68. Siya pa rin ang Atang de la Rama ng napabantog na Dalagang Bukid., 32 Remigio Mat Castro, Pagkakaisa (January 12, 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. Nicanor Tiongson (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2018). 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. 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. In this emotionally charged number, Anita discovers that her daughter is missing; she alternates between looking for her child and spiraling into manic laughter as Don Justo attempts, but fails, to comfort her.
At the age of 15, she starred in the sarsuela Dalagang Bukid, where she became known for singing the song "Nabasag na Banga". 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. 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. She died six months after her birthday Rama passed away on July 11, 1991, which was exactly six months after her 89th birthday. 46 Ibid. 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. 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. Career By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina. Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? 63 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, 5. 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. She fought for the advancement of the art for everyone so she brought the kundiman and sarsuela not only in big theaters in Manila but also in cockpit arena and plazas in the provinces and in the distant places of the natives. Mabuti na lang at broad-minded ako at nalalaman ko ang tulong na ginagawa niya sa mahihirap at sa mga manggagawa.
Atang dela Rama: 'The First Star of Philippine Cinema' - Philstar.com [4], Generations of Filipino artists and audiences consider Atang de la Rama's vocal and acting talents as responsible for much of the success of original Filipino sarsuelas like Dalagang Bukid, and dramas like Veronidia. Along with other major colonial ports such as Hong Kong, Batavia, and Singapore, Manila became part of a broader theatrical circuit of traveling opera companies, circuses, and minstrel shows in the Pacific region.Footnote33 At the turn of the twentieth century, variety shows were staged in different contexts including performances by American soldiers as part of their military entertainment as well as productions by traveling companies that catered to the general public.Footnote34, By the 1920s and 1930s, bodabil featured a mix of song, dance, and theatrical sketch performances by foreign-born and Filipino artists alike. 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.