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 Dela Rama was born on January 11, 1905 in Manila, Philippines. Atang de la Rama - Wikipilipinas 2 (2010): 35988, at 361. This treaty ceded the Philippines (along with Puerto Rico and Guam) to the United States in the aftermath of the Spanish-American war. For de la Rama, however, her self-fashioning style became an integral component of her status as a celebrity and a commanding artist. 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. I regret I am not seen often enough attending cultural events. Early life . 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. 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. At the age of 15, she starred in . 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. 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. Theather | PDF | Philippines | Theatre - Scribd 67 Jun Cruz Reyes, Ka Amado (Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2012), 15354, 25657. 43 Peter Keppy, Tales of the Southeast Asian Jazz Age, 80. 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. From de la Ramas nuanced characterizations of the virginal and idealized country maiden to the urbanized and flirtatious bailarina or cabaret dancer, her vocal command and onstage presence revolutionized the Tagalog sarsuwela scene in Manila from the 1920s through the prewar years. Also, Renato Lucas, A Preliminary Annotation of Selected Discography by Filipino Artists, 19131946, Journal of the Arts, Culture, and the Humanities 3, no. 51 From Lacnico-Buenaventuras 1985 interview with de la Rama. Another way to consider de la Ramas performance and creation of Filipina nationalism is through the image of the diva and the symbolic power it carried. But how can you remain relaxed at home on that night, knowing that Atang celebrates her gala of honor? 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. 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. De la Ramas personal writings hint that she engaged directly in this balancing act between private and public life. 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. 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 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. 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. Original text: Ay naku! 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. 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). 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. 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. 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 Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. Conferring the National Artist Award on Atang de la Rama, President Aquino says that the best in culture and the arts is achieved in a climate of political freedom. 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. 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. 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. De la Ramas dual image of the traditional Filipina and the cosmopolitan professional artist strikingly parallels these multiple strategies, and her inclusion in the publication highlights how her rising status as an international celebrity lent particular potency to the idea of feminine progress in the Philippines. 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. These concerns may have been reflecting the dynamics of De la Ramas own marriage to the poet and labor leader Amado Hernandez. 35 El Declinar del Teatro Nativo, La Vanguardia (March 5, 1932). In this article, I trace de la Ramas creative authorship through analyses of her performances onstage and offstage, where the aural and visual aspects of her role as Filipina diva come together. 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). 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. As Nabasag ang Banga progresses, however, the playfulness she adds to her interpretation slowly complicates the image of the meek and virginal Filipina. For a detailed account of the different theater venues that staged Spanish and Tagalog repertoire throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Cristina Lacnico-Buenaventura, The Theater in Manila, 1846-1946 (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1994). 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. 21 Tiongson, Atang de la Rama, 59; Fernandez, Zarzuela to Sarswela, 331. He was everything that didnt make money. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). group 4 theater it is the direction, performance and/or production design the roster ofnational artists (theater) honorata 'atang' dela rama. 3099067 To request a reprint or commercial or derivative permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below. The Queen of the Kundiman, at once a striking presence on the popular stages of Manila and beyond, demands that her performance be taken seriously. [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. 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. See Gino Gonzales et. 36 Ang Wika at mga Tugtugin, Bagong Lipang Kalabaw (October 7, 1922). 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. 64 Clutario, The Appearance of Filipina Nationalism, 224. 68 Atang de la Rama: Sarsuwela Star, Philippine Panorama (August 28, 1983). To complicate the stereotyped reading of the morally suspect flirt, however, de la Rama uses her voice to paint a subtler portrait of Sesangs struggle. 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. WATCH: 8 Philippine National Artists for Theater - TheaterFansManila.com 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. 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. The characteristic bitin or prolonged delivery of cadential phrase endings mentioned earlier, for example, echo vocal techniques heard in de la Ramas own recordings. Atang dela Rama: 'The First Star of Philippine Cinema' - Philstar.com