For a fascinating study on commemoration, prestige, and nation-building in the National Artist Award in the Philippines, see Neal D. Matherne, Naming the Artist, Composing the Philippines: Listening for the Nation in the National Artist Award, (PhD dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 2014). Louise Edwards and Mina Roces (London; New York, NY: Taylor and Francis, 2004), 2458. 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. Nicanor G. Tiongson. Career By the age of 7, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina. 34 Doreen Fernandez, Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater History (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1996), 88. This essay focuses on the career of Honorata Atang de la Rama on the popular sarsuwela and vaudeville stages during the period of American colonization in the Philippines. Guerrero. For de la Rama, however, her self-fashioning style became an integral component of her status as a celebrity and a commanding artist. 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. 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. 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. Dalagang Bukid showcases familiar scenes and social practices of early twentieth-century Manila, such as the cabaret and gambling, a favorite pastime of Angelitas parents, whose constant losses indebted them to Don Silvestre. 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. 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. The striking cabaret scenes portray glimpses of the leisurely life of young, middle-class men and of bailarinas. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). In the recording, the song is introduced with a short comedic dialogue in which de la Rama plays the role of a vendor who sells rice cakes to the tenor Vicente Ocampo, who then tries to squirm out of paying for the bibingka he had just tasted. To request a reprint or commercial or derivative permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below. On September 4, 1915, a lengthy article on the foxtrot by American ballroom dancer Joan Sawyer appeared in the Manila weekly journal The Independent, complete with detailed instructions and suggestions for which music should accompany the dance.Footnote22 Incorporating a foxtrot in the sarsuwela also points to a standard practice of using globally circulating popular musics in sarsuwela scores. 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. She was married to National Artist for Literature, Amado V. Hernandez. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. 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. 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. An article from 1932 in Manilas Spanish-language newspaper La Vanguardia, for example, announced the decline of the sarsuwela due to the profane and good for nothing vaudeville.Footnote35 Such commentaries underline the debates between high and low art that preoccupied composers and intellectuals of the period, and express their anxieties about American influence. A 1930 appearance in the sarsuwela Maria Luisa offers another example of de la Ramas authorial role as a performing artist.Footnote30 In this work, she played the role of Anita, the daughter of the wealthy Don Justo. Theater historian Nicanor Tiongson underscores the importance of Ignacio and de la Ramas relationship, and how he helped launch her career by guaranteeing her roles in sarsuwelas that he was commissioned to write.Footnote23 Yet it was also plausible that Ignacios career and the entire Tagalog sarsuwela scene in Manila took an upward turn because of de la Ramas successful debut in Dalagang Bukid. 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. Breaking down stereotypes: The divas voice, On the multiple stages of popular entertainment, Creating Filipina nationalism: The divas image, https://doi.org/10.1080/01411896.2021.1992595, https://www.flickr.com/photos/9307819@N05/2544474500/in/photostream/, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/clippings/NLPADB00811486/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/NL02/NLPADGD40850fd/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00311420/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00111373/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/NLPADMNB00111378/datejpg1.htm, http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/AD01/manuscripts/home.htm, Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health. 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. 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 . She was the producer and the writer of plays such as Anak ni Eva and Bulaklak ng Kabundukan. 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. "Atang" de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. 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. De la Cruz also appeared in films and received a FAMAS Best Supporting Actress Award in 1953. Tamang sagot sa tanong: MUSIC please help me() - studystoph.com Singing competitions such as the Jazz and Kundiman Championship were also quite popular during the 1920s and were instrumental in presenting the genre as Filipino in contradistinction to jazz. In these contests, Jazz Girls were pitted against Lady Kundimans, which featured Atang de la Rama and Maggie Calloway, a silent film star in the late 1920s.Footnote43 Composers of this period took a serious interest in creating kundimans precisely because of the very voices that opened up the genre to a wider audience and gave life to their compositions. 24 See Peter Keppy, Tales of the Southeast Asian Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians and Popular Culture, 19201936 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2019); also Frederick J. Schenker, Empire of Syncopation: Music, Race, and Labor in Colonial Asias Jazz Age (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2016). 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. 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. In a tennis court scene showing the new types of social spaces that women could inhabit, Sesang appears wearing sports attire as she hangs out with her suitors. 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. In the final repetition of the songs chorus, de la Rama plays out affective vocal nuances with the pronounced slowness of her delivery. Atang de la Rama. See Motoe Terami-Wada, Philippine Stage Performances During the Japanese Occupation, Philippine Studies 29, no. 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. Cultural Center of the Philippines. 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. Trivia (7) As Queen of Zarzuela, she starred in more than 50 zarzuelas. Mabuti na lang at broad-minded ako at nalalaman ko ang tulong na ginagawa niya sa mahihirap at sa mga manggagawa. 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. 3 (1993): 32043; and Nicanor Tiongson, A Short History of the Philippine Sarsuwela (1879-2009), Philippine Humanities Review: Sarsuwela 11, 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.