To them, the American characteristics deemed feminine were conflated with the modern woman: English-speaking, university-educated, a professional or a clubwoman active in civic work, and by the 1920s, a suffragist. As such, her work serves as a critical example of an artists rewriting of gendered identities embedded in the text and music. 21 Tiongson, Atang de la Rama, 59; Fernandez, Zarzuela to Sarswela, 331. Angelita and Cipriano are the main protagonists in the sarsuwela. To request a reprint or commercial or derivative permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below. 50 Nick Deocampo, Film: American Influences on Philippine Cinema (Mandaluyong, Philippines: Anvil, 2017), 519. To learn about our use of cookies and how you can manage your cookie settings, please see our Cookie Policy. For more on the history of the U.S. empire the Philippines, see Paul Kramer, Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 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. 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. Of all the many roles she played and stages on which she appeared, her performance in Dalagang Bukid remains her greatest and most memorable success.Footnote72 But a more comprehensive account of her creative and artistic breadth reveals an artist with a keen understanding of performance both on and off the stage. [2], Atang de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. In 1987 she was inducted into the pantheon of National Artists in the Philippines, the highest award for arts and culture given by the national government. Rejecting the idea that their campaign grew out of an American cultural construction of the feminine, Filipina suffragists took to what they called panuelo activism in their use of the terno and reasserted the idea that the womens suffrage was, indeed, a Filipino project.Footnote62. But even as de la Rama was widely known as the Queen of the Kundiman, she also performed songs outside of the kundiman and Tagalog repertory and occasionally appeared in risqu performances. She did this twice already and she hopes to continue doing so until all who comes to watch her learns to behave properly.Footnote54. [1] Atang de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina.At the age of 15, she starred in the . 60 The term terno emerged in the late 1900s and originally referred to the use of a single type of material (like the sinamay or abac fabric) for the camisa, pauelo, and saya of the dress, creating a more uniform and matching look. Her celebrity image and creative output arguably kept the Tagalog sarsuwela stage afloat, even in the midst of increasing competition from other forms of popular entertainment in the 1930s and toward the latter years of the American colonial period. 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 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. This approach allows me to situate the sarsuwela stage as part of a growing industry that included vaudeville, early cinema, sound recording, and radio. Her work highlights the role of the performer as an equally important locus of creative authorship as that ascribed to playwrights and composers. I would also like to thank Journal of Musicological Research editor Hilary Poriss and the journals anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback. The most notable of these were Sakay, Anak Dalita, Kandelerong Pilak, Sergeant Hasan, Destination Vietnam, and The Evil Within. She died on July 11, 1991 in the Philippines. The works of Severino Reyes (18611942), one of the foremost playwrights of the Tagalog sarsuwela, are exemplary. 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. 61 Roces, Is the Suffragist an American Colonial Construct, 45. She firmly believed . Makalawa na niyang ginawa ito at umaasa siyang magpatuloy habang ang mga nanonood sa dulaan ay hindi natututong magpakatino.. See also Angel Velasco and Luis Francia, Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999 (New York: New York University Press, 2002). 55 Karen Henson, Introduction: Of Modern Operatic Mythologies and Technologies, in Technology and the Diva: Sopranos, Opera, and Media from Romanticism to the Digital Age, ed. Original text: Ay naku! When there was a strike, he would order sacks of rice and cans of biscuits and charge them to me. 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. 71 De la Rama was awarded the National Artist Award for theater and music. Placing the performer and her creative labor front and center, I aim to contribute to the larger conversation surrounding the female voice as authorial and the performance as text. 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. 54 Ignacio Manlapaz, Philippines Herald (April 1934). 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. 27 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 11011. During the American. 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. 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. 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. 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. This is significant when the use of fashion negotiated multiple aspects of Filipina femininity at a time when womens roles in the larger society were changing rapidly, and as de la Rama shaped her own professional career in the Philippines and abroad. 47 Savoy Nifties New Spanish Ballet, The Tribune (January 24, 1925). She was the producer and the writer of plays such as Anak ni Eva and Bulaklak ng Kabundukan. He was everything that didnt make money. The perception that suffragists also had strong support from American colonial officials (such as Governor General Francis Burton Harrison) added to the political tensions. national hometown : pandacan artist manila award type of art : for theater and theater music and music tools and materials : (1987) music and films why is the artists' art artistic, distinctive, and of superior quality? 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. al., Fashionable Filipinas, 141. 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. 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. During the latter part of her life she lived in Gagalangin, Tondo, birthplace of her husband, Amado V. Hernandez, himself a National Artist, whom she married in 1932. At the age of 15, she starred in . I will never permit myself to be caught dead in a knee-length skirt, without the customary panuelo, and without camisa sleeves that look like the wings of a newly hatched grasshopper.Footnote63. 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. 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. (Manila: Paredes, 1923). 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. 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. In the final repetition of the songs chorus, de la Rama plays out affective vocal nuances with the pronounced slowness of her delivery. The striking cabaret scenes portray glimpses of the leisurely life of young, middle-class men and of bailarinas. 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). 58 Roces, Is the Suffragist an American Colonial Construct, 3233. 1/2 (1997): 12850, at 141. 25 Schenker, Empire of Syncopation, 25657. 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. Several commentators unabashedly praised the diva in the local press. As scholars Peter Keppy and Frederick Schenker have noted, the real-life cabarets that proliferated in the Philippines were subject to crackdowns by local authorities as well as to criticisms by Filipino elites and nationalist rhetoric.Footnote24 Schenker, in particular, points to the ways in which bailarinas of this period were caught in the debates about Filipino racial respectability and readiness for self-rule.Footnote25, Ang Kiri fleshes out the moral and cultural contradictions of Manilas cabaret scene through the story of Sesang, a former bailarina who reenters polite society.Footnote26 As the kiri or coquette character, Sesang bears the social stigma of her occupation and struggles to seek moral redemption throughout the drama. 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. 17 The recording I used for this analysis is a compact disc compilation entitled Kamuning: Re-mastered (Quezon City: Yesteryears Music Gallery, 2000). 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). Because of her ubiquitous visibility in the artistic and civic life in the Philippines, her name has outlived those of most other artists of the sarsuwela stage, and her career withstood the changes and technological advances in mass media that occurred throughout her long life. These accounts skip over the existence of the kundiman in the popular entertainment stages like bodabil, thus helping to eliminate de la Ramas influence from the historical record. 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? 51 From Lacnico-Buenaventuras 1985 interview with de la Rama. De la Rama was unique in successfully navigating these different performance platforms, allowing her to achieve a lasting career in Philippine theater and music throughout the twentieth century. 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. Today marks the 28th death anniversary of the Philippines massive star, Honorata "Atang" de la Rama born on January 11, 1902, and died in 1991. Standard historical accounts often point to Severino Reyess shift in his writing career to become a journalist and editor in the early 1920s as the beginning of sarsuwelas decline, just as vaudeville and film were becoming more popular in the Philippines. Atang Dela Rama is a national artist for theater and music queen of kundiman. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. occupation of the Philippines, Atang de la Wrote short stories in Tagalog Prima Donna of Filipino. She was an actress, known for Dalagang bukid (1919), Mahiwagang binibini: Ang kiri (1939) and Oriental Blood (1930). Moreover, de la Ramas choice of a short wavy hairstyle (the Marcel and finger waves hairstyles) and use of makeup points to what Clutario argues represented a conscious act among Filipinas to transform their appearance as a way to make claims to modernity vis--vis modern beauty.Footnote64 Combined with the terno, de la Ramas appearance conveyed a fusion of the traditional and modern, pastoral and cosmopolitan. At this same time, Manilas moralists and staunch nationalists accused the bodabil stage of peddling in vulgarity and criticized its performance of American jazz. In Deocampos words, this decision would ensure patronage for this novelty entertainment that, in the early years of moving pictures, could hardly compete with the immense popularity of theatrical shows.Footnote50 Indeed, it was not only the presence of de la Rama on film that generated new audiences for the medium. She was an actress, known for Dalagang bukid (1919), Mahiwagang binibini: Ang kiri (1939) and Oriental Blood (1930). 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). 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. 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. 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). But how can you remain relaxed at home on that night, knowing that Atang celebrates her gala of honor? 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. Spanish artists Elisea Raguer and Alejandro Cubero soon followed and were later responsible for training local artists such as Nemesio Ratia, Jos Carvajal, and Prxedes Yeyeng Fernndez, all of whom subsequently formed their own companies. Atang became the very first actress in the very first locally produced Filipino film when she essayed the same role in the sarsuela's film version. 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. 67 Jun Cruz Reyes, Ka Amado (Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2012), 15354, 25657. Permission will be required if your reuse is not covered by the terms of the License. 3 (1993): 32043, at 331. 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. 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. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un . The sartorial imagery of the dalagang bukid became a standard for young women who had their portraits taken in the 1920s and 1930s, wearing balintawak with pastoral backgrounds and using props such as a banga or clay jug and baskets of flowers or produce. First, I explore specific examples of character types that de la Rama popularized on the sarsuwela stage, focusing on how her performances vividly recreated and brought to life fictional representations of the Filipina. 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. 7 Carolyn Abbate, Opera; or, the Envoicing of Women, in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Honorata de la Rama Hernandez, popularly known as Atang de la Rama, a singer and performer is the first star of the Philippine Cinema. Kung umaawit siya sa tanghalan ay laging minamataan niya ang mga gumagambala sa kanyang pag-awit, at sa sandaling makatapos ay nananaog siya sa ibaba at binabayaran ng mariing sampal sa mukha ang sinumang bumastos sa kanya. She also made an effort to bring the kundiman and sarsuela to the indigenous peoples of the Philippine such as the Igorots, the Aetas, and the Mangyans.