While Reyes extols the virtue and bravery of the Filipina, especially in her contributions to the revolution against Spain, he nevertheless reaffirms that the only natural place for women is in the home. 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. . 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. TRIVIA for the DAY: - Filipino Heritage Festival Inc. | Facebook Atang dela Rama is billed 'The First Star of Philippine Cinema' as she portrayed the title role in Dalagang Bukid in 1919. Guerrero. Original text: Ay naku! 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. 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. 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. 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 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. Atang Dela Rama was born on January 11, 1905 in Manila, Philippines. This juxtaposition of urban and rural highlighted the ideals of Filipino women being challenged by the corrupting influences of foreign liberal views, often embodied in the character of the bailarina who navigated the world of cabarets (kabaret in the Tagalog scripts) and dance halls in Manilas nightlife. 49 Enriquez, Appropriation of Colonial Broadcasting, 10910. Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? Atang de la Rama - Wikipilipinas She was also at the forefront of introducing Filipino culture to foreign audiences. 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. In the 1930s, de la Rama was on the roster of artists in the KZIB radio station founded by the American department store owner Isaac Beck. 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. TV Shows. 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. 67 Jun Cruz Reyes, Ka Amado (Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2012), 15354, 25657. National Artist of the Philippines - Wikipedia Gawad Tanglaw ng Lahi | Traditional University Awards | Ateneo de At the end of this rendition, one is left with the distinct impression that she is mischievously waiting to tip over and break the jar herself.Footnote18. 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. Deflecting the advances of this suitor, Angelita elopes with her childhood sweetheart, the law student Cipriano. 17 The recording I used for this analysis is a compact disc compilation entitled Kamuning: Re-mastered (Quezon City: Yesteryears Music Gallery, 2000). 34 Doreen Fernandez, Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater History (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1996), 88. Facebook 3 (1993): 32043; and Nicanor Tiongson, A Short History of the Philippine Sarsuwela (1879-2009), Philippine Humanities Review: Sarsuwela 11, no. Ki a kundiman s zarzuela kirlynje? 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. Hence, it is in Atang de la Ramas performance, her creative authorship, that the sarsuwelas are made real. Atang Dela Rama is a national artist for theater and music queen of kundiman. 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. On January 11, 1902, Honorata "Atang" de la Rama, National Artist for theater and music, was born in Pandacan, Manila. Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine. 10 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 2. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina. 7 Carolyn Abbate, Opera; or, the Envoicing of Women, in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. She was named a national artist of the Philippines in 1987, at the age of 85. 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. Claiming to reproduce first-hand impressions from a letter by de la Rama, the Philippine Free Press article mentioned that she met, among others, Artemio Ricarte, a popular Filipino general during the 1896 Revolution against Spain and the Philippine-American War, who was living in exile in Japan for his role in the fight for Philippine independence. 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. Siya pa rin ang Atang de la Rama ng napabantog na Dalagang Bukid., 32 Remigio Mat Castro, Pagkakaisa (January 12, 1930). I am especially indebted to Pamela Potter, Christi-Anne Castro, Susan Cook, Anne Shreffler, Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Elisabeth Reisinger, David Miller, and Frederick Schenker. In addition to the sarsuwela and bodabil stages, de la Rama commanded an audience via emerging new media such as audio recordings, radio, and film. 35 El Declinar del Teatro Nativo, La Vanguardia (March 5, 1932). See also Fernandez, Palabas, 8889. Also, Renato Lucas, A Preliminary Annotation of Selected Discography by Filipino Artists, 19131946, Journal of the Arts, Culture, and the Humanities 3, no. 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. Trivia (7) As Queen of Zarzuela, she starred in more than 50 zarzuelas. As such, her work serves as a critical example of an artists rewriting of gendered identities embedded in the text and music. Her vocal training in a variety of styles including Italian opera combined well with the idiosyncrasies and theatricality of the Tagalog language. Within this tension between the urban and the rural, representations of women often invoked expectations of Filipina femininity that conveyed a nostalgia for the pastoral lifestyle, a reaction to perceived encroachments of the foreign and the modern onto traditional Filipino values. See Motoe Terami-Wada, Philippine Stage Performances During the Japanese Occupation, Philippine Studies 29, no. By the late 1910s and early 1920s, sarsuwela repertoire mirrored anxieties around the urbanization of Manila in striking contrast to the idyllic rural countryside. Atang Dela Rama - Biography - IMDb 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. 14 From the typescript of the play Tatlong Babae: Ang Babae Bukas, act 3, p. 9, Severino Reyes Collection, Cultural Center of the Philippines Library and Archives, Pasay City, Philippines. 11 Andrew N. Weintraub and Bart Barendregt, eds., Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2017), 2. 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. 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. Nicanor G. Tiongson. [3] 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. 39 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. Adam in Paradise) that is set on an island full of women, all of whom pursued a stranded and hapless man with a mix of enticing dialogs, songs, and comedic repartees.Footnote53 This is a side of de la Ramas stage career that is not well known, one that stands in striking contrast to her reputation as the demure country maiden. Who Is Atang Dela Rama? - The Philippines Today These and most of the other sarsuwelas in which de la Rama performed were composed by Leon Ignacio, the foremost sarsuwela composer of the 1920s. Her vocal technique and theatricality not only made her especially well-suited for the genre but also created the kundimans distinctive sentimentality and now-standard performative nuances. She was the producer and the writer of plays such as Anak ni Eva and Bulaklak ng Kabundukan. 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. A recording of the song, set in the lilting danza rhythm, begins with a subdued rendition by de la Rama of the opening verse as Sesang sadly reminisces about her cabaret days. [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. Courtesy of the National Library of the Philippines, As Roces further points out, moreover, a complex politics of dress was carried out by the local suffragists, who purposefully used the traje de mestiza or terno in their civic-oriented work to counter those who perceived the movement as yet another form of colonial expansion. 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. Registered in England & Wales No. 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. Courtesy of Butterscotch Auction, Newspaper accounts of her tours abroad included descriptions of de la Ramas appearance, revealing the medias tendency to focus on female singers physical looks more than on their musical talent.
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