Becks store sold radios and phonographs and was the distributor of Columbia records in Manila. Ignacio Manlapazs description of her in the Philippines Herald is illustrative: Atang de la Rama helps in the eradication of untoward behavior of theatergoers and that they may learn to respect the art of acting. She became the very first actress in the very first . That was why Atang de la Ramas pocket was always empty [Emphasis in the original].Footnote68. De la Ramas performances were at once sources of musical authorship and powerful testaments to womens creative work that has long been overlooked in the historiography of Philippine music and culture. I would also like to thank Journal of Musicological Research editor Hilary Poriss and the journals anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback. 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. 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. 36 Ang Wika at mga Tugtugin, Bagong Lipang Kalabaw (October 7, 1922). One review in The Tribune expressed shock at how the demure little Queen of Kundiman steps out with some of the most wicked scandal-stuff imaginable. Atang de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. De la Ramas personal writings hint that she engaged directly in this balancing act between private and public life.
Birth anniversary of National Artist Atang de la Rama In the final repetition of the songs chorus, de la Rama plays out affective vocal nuances with the pronounced slowness of her delivery. 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. As of this writing, there are 7 National Artist for Theater awardees. Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? As such, her work serves as a critical example of an artists rewriting of gendered identities embedded in the text and music. 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. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina. 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. The other women awardees largely belonged to performing arts categories. Permission will be required if your reuse is not covered by the terms of the License. She was widowed in 1970 In 1970, at the age of 68, her husband, Amado V. Hernandez, passed away. 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. Wherever I go, in the course of my professional tours and engagements, I always wear my saya long and the sleeves of my camisa as ample as they should be like the gauzy wings of a butterfly, and it has never failed to elicit sighs of admiration among women of other countries I have visited. 68 Atang de la Rama: Sarsuwela Star, Philippine Panorama (August 28, 1983). Historical accounts of the 1919 Dalagang Bukid film version remark on how de la Rama, on occasion, performed the songs live and in synchrony with the film.Footnote51 In this early beginning of commercial cinema in the Philippines, it was de la Ramas voice from behind the curtain that provided the emotional depth to the novelty of images being projected on the screen.
Atang Dela Rama - IMDb Formal U.S. occupation of the archipelago ended in 1946 with the declaration of Philippine Independence, while the influence of the American empire in the Philippines continued long after. 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.. 71 De la Rama was awarded the National Artist Award for theater and music. In 1938, she formed her own theatrical group, the Compaia De la Rama, which staged sarsuwela repertoire and some Tagalog adaptations of European repertoire such as Puccinis Madama Butterfly.Footnote52 She wrote and directed shows for the bodabil stage which featured a mix of jazz and blues songs with Tagalog repertoire that she performed. 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). Register a free Taylor & Francis Online account today to boost your research and gain these benefits: Creative Authorship and the Filipina Diva Atang de la Rama. It is good that I am broad-minded and I knew that he helped the poor and the workers. 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). The solo Nabasag ang Banga (The Clay Jar Broke) from the first act provides a description of Angelitas character. Perhaps the most remarkable review comes from Maria Luisas author, Remigio Mat Castro, published in the Tagalog paper Pagkakaisa: If Maria Luisa is praised and enjoyed, I can only say that, as its author, I am indebted to Atang de la Rama, who is a true miracle in her role from the first act of the play until the end more so when she sang the song of madness Jesus One hears from all corners of the theater the audience crying and the mute sighs of their pent-up emotions.Footnote32. 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. 45 El Poder del Kundiman, Philippines Free Press (August 21, 1926). Ang Kiri is an example of a subset of sarsuwelas from this period that contrasted urban cosmopolitan Manila with the idyllic countryside. 44 Schenker, Empire of Syncopation, 419. They are. This was a practice employed by composers at the turn of the twentieth century who liberally used dance forms such as the waltz, habanera, tango, mazurka, and polka. And she gets away with it.Footnote47 While there are only a few accounts of de la Ramas performances outside of the kundiman repertoire, recordings provide more information about the breadth of styles and repertoire in which she excelled. 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. Nicanor G. Tiongson. I then turn to de la Ramas work outside of the sarsuwela to further elaborate on her authorial performance within the broader landscape of popular entertainment in the Philippines and abroad.
Dalagang bukid (1919) - IMDb Ki a kundiman s zarzuela kirlynje? theather. 64 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 224. 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 Dalagang Bukid, de la Rama played the part of Angelita, a young girl working as a flower vendor who embodied the virtuous Filipina amidst the backdrop of Manilas bustling nightlife. For more information please visit our Permissions help page.
Honorata Rama-Hernandez (January 11, 1902 - Prabook 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. Guerrero. De la Rama as dalagang bukid on the program cover for the December 7, 1919 benefit performance. Figure 2. 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. 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. 12 (2004): 75106, at 9798. Her direct address to potential audiences reflected a bold and confident voice that knew how and when to play the crowd.
Atang de la Rama - geni family tree 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. 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. Fictional representations of the Filipina as the heroine often relied on the ideal good woman archetype or on the moral redemption of the good girl-turned-bad. Images of meek and subservient women abound in early twentieth century Tagalog literature, which led literary historian and critic Soledad Reyes to comment on the recurring portrayal of the obedient, faithful and self-sacrificing wife who suffers in silence even when confronted with her husbands infidelities.Footnote12 The characterizations of women in Tagalog sarsuwelas, on the other hand, reflected differing attitudes and responses to modernization in the Philippines.
Honorata "ATANG" dela Rama - Philippine Artists,Traditions and Culture De la Rama on the front cover of The Womans Outlook (July 1926 Issue). 7 Carolyn Abbate, Opera; or, the Envoicing of Women, in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. He initially established KZIB to advertise his merchandise and to help boost sales through entertainment, which he provided by tapping the local recording artists for Columbia, including de la Rama, as part of his regular music programming.Footnote49. 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. 23 Nicanor Tiongson, Atang de la Rama: Unat Huling Bituin, Liwayway (March 10, 1980). 8 Hilary Poriss, Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). The Filipino dresss butterfly sleeves and abac fabric made of banana tree fibers (also called Manila hemp) were considered impractical for the modern workplace. [3] 50 Nick Deocampo, Film: American Influences on Philippine Cinema (Mandaluyong, Philippines: Anvil, 2017), 519.