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. Queen of the Kundiman and. 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? In addressing performance as a source of creative power, I follow Carolyn Abbates theorization of how a musical work exists only as it is given phenomenal reality by its performers.Footnote7 It is through the artists voice and presence that the sarsuwelas texts and music come off the page and reach the audiences senses. 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. 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. She finds it impossible to keep on a balanced budget unless she helps her partner in lifethat is, she gets a job. 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. 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. 5 The playwright Severino Reyes was among the early advocates of the Tagalog sarsuwela who produced didactic works that were critical of Spanish colonialism. 20 Remigio Mat Castro, Nabasag ang Banga? At this same time, Manilas moralists and staunch nationalists accused the bodabil stage of peddling in vulgarity and criticized its performance of American jazz. TRIVIA for the DAY: National Artist for Theater and Music (1987) Honorata "Atang" Dela Rama was formally honored as the Queen of Kundiman in 1979. 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. Original text: Tumutulong si Atang de la Rama upang ang mga may pangit na asal na nanonood sa mga dulaan ay matutong gumalang sa arte. 49 Enriquez, Appropriation of Colonial Broadcasting, 10910. 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. 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. 3 Written histories of Spanish zarzuela in the Philippines often start with an account of the staging of Francisco Barbieris Jugar con Fuego, sometime between 1878 and 1879 by Dario Cspedes, who managed a zarzuela company in Spain prior to his arrival in Manila. The intricate folding of the panuelo is in itself an art, and it has been a constant source of wonder among foreigners. De la Ramas fame as the Queen of Kundiman spread beyond Manila as she embarked on several extended tours abroad in 1926, 1932, and 1936. 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. Details Release date September 25, 1919 (Philippines) Country of origin Philippines 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. 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. Perhaps it is only theater royalty who could get away with schooling their public. 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. 1/2 (1997): 12850, at 141. 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. Background Atang de la Rama was born in Tondo, Manila on January 11, 1905. 11 Andrew N. Weintraub and Bart Barendregt, eds., Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2017), 2. Si Adan sa Paraiso (Man!!! Atang de la Rama was born in Tondo Manila on January 11 1902. Angelita and Cipriano are the main protagonists in the sarsuwela. 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. 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. Courtesy of Adlai Lara. 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. She was widowed in 1970 In 1970, at the age of 68, her husband, Amado V. Hernandez, passed away. Menu. De la Ramas celebrity status also carried through the visual aspects of her public persona on and off stage, cultivating an image that was both modern and traditional, Filipino and cosmopolitan. 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? 43 Peter Keppy, Tales of the Southeast Asian Jazz Age, 80. 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. 38 Santiago, The Development of Music in the Philippine Islands, 516. Anvil Publishing.2004. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un . De la Rama on the front cover of The Womans Outlook (July 1926 Issue). 17 The recording I used for this analysis is a compact disc compilation entitled Kamuning: Re-mastered (Quezon City: Yesteryears Music Gallery, 2000). In Sesangs Act II solo Ang Masayang Dalaga (The Coquette),Footnote29 for instance, she plays the seductress who confidently lures her admirer to an intimate dance. 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. Copies of her comedy sketches includes a short skit entitled Lalake!!! [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. 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. 25 Schenker, Empire of Syncopation, 25657. Sesangs character as the former cabaret dancer embodies the modern, cosmopolitan woman of the 1920s, while scenes and costume details situate her worldly and morally questionable personality.Footnote28. Original text: Kung napupuri at kinagigiliwan ang Maria Luisa, ang masasabi ko, bilang awtor, ay utang kay Atang de la Rama na isang tunay na himala sa pagtupad ng kanyang papel simula sa unang bahagi ng dula at hanggang sa wakas lalo noong inaawit niya ang awit ng pagkahibang Hesus Naririnig sa lahat ng dako nang dulaan ang iyakan ng mga manonood at ang mga piping buntong -hininga ng damdaming nakukuyom sa kanilang mga puso.. 48 This survey is from various sources: Yesteryear Recording Kamuning: Remastered (see footnote 17); Elizabeth Enriquez, Appropriation of Colonial Broadcasting: A History of Early Radio in the Philippines, 1922-1946 (Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2008), 213; Schenker, Empire of Syncopation, 497. The other women awardees largely belonged to performing arts categories. Theater scholars have noted that de la Rama danced while singing Nabasag ang Banga during some performances.Footnote21 Her bakya (wooden clog slippers) tapping to the foxtrot rhythm poses a striking contrast to the image of the country maiden, projecting an ambivalent and playful reflection on U.S. American cultural influences. Atang believed that art should be for everyone; not only did she perform in major Manila theaters such as the Teatro Libertad and the Teatro Zorilla, but also in cockpits and open plazas in Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. 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]. Pag may welga, magpapakuha yan ng saku-sakong bigas at lata ng biskuwit kayat palaging laslas ang bulsa ni Atang de la Rama. Emphasis in the original article. I refuse to believe it, because you were, you are, and will always be my good protector and affectionate friend Ill wait for you, then. 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. A sense of this interpretation can be gleaned from her recording of this pivotal song released years following the sarsuwelas premiere.Footnote17 Listening to the recording of Nabasag ang Banga, the power of de la Ramas voice is defined less by its intensity and more by the preciseness of her pitch and clarity of her tone. 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. Cultural Center of the Philippines. [3] 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. 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. 33 See also Matthew Wittman, Empire of Culture: U.S. 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. De la Ramas Angelita sheds the image of the delicate country girl who, as the common Tagalog idiom implies, cannot break a plate (di makabasag pinggan). 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. De la Ramas performances transformed the kundiman into a particularly potent musical and cultural symbol of Filipino identity. 73 De la Rama penned several sarsuwela scripts including Dalagang Silanganan (Maid of the East), Diwata ng Ipugaw (Fairy of Ifugao), and Anak ni Eba (Daughter of Eve). The sarsuwela (also labeled in the Tagalog as opereta by its librettist Hermogenes Ilagan) was set to music by de la Ramas brother-in-law Leon Ignacio. She is still the Atang de la Rama of the popular Dalagang Bukid.Footnote31 Vera Reyess observations reveal how, after nearly a decade, de la Ramas reputation and early success in Dalagang Bukid remained fresh with theater goers in Manila, even as de la Rama had moved on to portray other characters, and after she had become popular in the thriving vaudeville stages of Manila in the mid1920s. 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. By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina. De la Rama in different versions of the traje de mestiza and terno. Angelitas parents plan to marry her off to the much older and wealthy loan shark Don Silvestre. Becks store sold radios and phonographs and was the distributor of Columbia records in Manila. 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. Guerrero. The balintawak, with its prominent sleeves and translucent fabric paired with a shawl wrapped around the waist, was the everyday clothing of the lower and middle working classes in the first decades of the twentieth century. National Commission for Culture and the Arts. 28 In Sesangs first entrance at the opening party scene, for example, the libretto instructs the actor to appear in a dress dcolletage (nakabestidong escotado). 27 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 11011. Similarly, de la Rama remains a crucial figure in the early history of cinema in the Philippines, even as she herself was starting out on the sarsuwela stage. [4] She has also been a theatrical producer, writer and talent manager. 1 Notes on terminology: I use Tagalog primarily to mean the language, while I use Filipino as descriptor for the people and Philippine culture more broadly. The iconic image of de la Rama as dalagang bukid also likely inspired the well-known dalagang Filipina subject found in painter Fernando Amorsolos romantic-realist scenes of the idyllic countryside from the 1920s (see Figure 2), with its bandanna-clad young woman who bears some likeness to de la Ramas 1919 portrait. See Doreen Fernandez, Zarzuela to Sarswela: Indigenization and Transformation, Philippine Studies 41, no. Si Adan sa Paraiso, Plays and Short Stories Folder, Atang de la Rama Collection, National Library of the Philippines (http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00311420/datejpg1.htm). Several commentators unabashedly praised the diva in the local press. See Helen F. Samson-Lauterwald, Music in the Sarsuwelas of Severino Reyes (Lola Basyang) (Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016). As the above quote suggests, her ability to connect with her audience went beyond her characterization of the bashful country maiden, and had, in a short span of time, allowed for a playful familiarity with her growing fan base. She was an actress, known for Dalagang bukid (1919), Mahiwagang binibini: Ang kiri (1939) and Oriental Blood (1930). No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Academics echoed similar critiques. Soon after, fighting broke out between American and Filipino forces, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Filipino military and civilians. Photographs of de la Rama aided her popularity locally and abroad and served as additional sites for her performance of Filipina femininity. 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. 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. 22 The article was derived from a booklet published by Columbia Gramophone Company with a letter written by Sawyer, dated November 23, 1914. At the age of 15, she starred in the sarsuela Dalagang Bukid, where she became known for singing the song "Nabasag na Banga". 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. 4 Over three hundred years of Spanish colonial occupation in the Philippines ended with the Philippine Revolution (1896-1898) and the Treaty of Paris of 1898. 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. The perception that suffragists also had strong support from American colonial officials (such as Governor General Francis Burton Harrison) added to the political tensions. Figure 4. 47 Savoy Nifties New Spanish Ballet, The Tribune (January 24, 1925). 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. In many of her publicity photos, she wears the Filipino dress typically worn by middle- and upper-class women, the traje de mestiza (see Figure 3). 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. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 22558. As Jun Cruz Reyes has suggested, it is possible that Hernandez became more politically active because of de la Rama, not the other way around.Footnote69 Such a commentary points to the generative work done by women like de la Rama that often remain unacknowledged in histories of Philippine culture. 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. The light timbral quality and the open sound of her voice all aid in the clear articulation of the text. 58 Roces, Is the Suffragist an American Colonial Construct, 3233. It came to represent idealized images of Filipina femininity found in the sarsuwelas.Footnote56 This photo invites further reading on how de la Ramas own image carries a powerful influence separate from that created for her by the sarsuwelas authors. 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". 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. Besides here, his angelic voice also came . 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.

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