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. She navigated the theatrical stages of sarsuwela and bodabil fluidly, occasionally writing and producing shows herself. Despite the poor quality of some of the recordings, her voice remains striking in its clarity and vibrancy, a distinctive characteristic that resounded particularly well in early Philippine radio broadcasting. 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. Missing from this historiography of the kundiman, however, is de la Ramas active role in performing and building up the kundiman repertory as much as its composers had done. 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. 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. 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. 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. I am not arguing that de la Ramas creative power and influence relies on her performance alone and that her work as an artist occludes her output as a writer: de la Rama left a rich and resonant archive of her original drafts of short stories, comedic sketches, personal essays, and sarsuwela librettos, evidence of a thriving intellectual life that accompanied her career in performance.Footnote73 Instead, what I am suggesting is that the artist herself has the authority over her own performancein all its aural and visual manifestationsfleshing out alternative ways of thinking about and listening to a musical and theatrical work. 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. Deflecting the advances of this suitor, Angelita elopes with her childhood sweetheart, the law student Cipriano. The light timbral quality and the open sound of her voice all aid in the clear articulation of the text. At age fifteen, de la Rama had her first opportunity to complicate the figure of the demure Filipina maiden when she made her debut in Dalagang Bukid in 1917. The bilingual (English and Spanish) magazine, edited by Filipino suffragist Trining Fernandez-Legarda, promoted itself as devoted to the best traditions of the Filipino home and the progress of the women in the Philippines. Although the magazine published many articles dedicated to family life and domesticity, it also included features and commentary that encouraged women to go out of the home in order to become better wives and mothers; moreover, its editorial board explicitly advocated for womens suffrage during the 1920s and 1930s.Footnote65 The (uncaptioned) cover photo links de la Rama with her iconic role by juxtaposing her headshot with a full profile of her as the dalagang bukid. Her cover photo is framed by texts that point to the magazines multiple strategies for advancing womens progress within the confines of homemaking as well as in seeking full participation in civic life. Angelita ( Atang de la Rama ), a young flower vendor who works in front of a cabaret named Dalagang Bukid, and poor law student Cipriano (Marceliano Ilagan) are in love. See also Fernandez, Palabas, 8889. [4] She has also been a theatrical producer, writer and talent manager. 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. 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. In her introduction to an essay collection on technology and the figure of the diva, musicologist Karen Henson remarks on how the diva is created when sopranos, audience members and one or more technologies come together. In this process, the visual replaces the aural and refutes the notion that the divas authenticity only resides in the pure power of the voice and vocal expression.Footnote55 De la Ramas celebrity photographs became a crucial medium in which her images circulated, creating a diverse set of audiences beyond those who witnessed her on the theatrical stage. She finds it impossible to keep on a balanced budget unless she helps her partner in lifethat is, she gets a job. Speech of President Corazon Aquino at the National Artist Award Angelita and Cipriano are the main protagonists in the sarsuwela. National Commission for Culture and the Arts. 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. Her consistent pairing of the Filipino dress, the terno, with global beauty trends in makeup and hairstyles revealed a self-fashioning practice that was simultaneously modern and traditional, Filipino and cosmopolitan. De la Rama as dalagang bukid on the program cover for the December 7, 1919 benefit performance. Angelitas parents plan to marry her off to the much older and wealthy loan shark Don Silvestre. He was everything that didnt make money. 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. Such self-fashioning carried political significance, especially during the resurgence of nationalism and in the emerging womens movement during the 1920s and 1930s in the Philippines. She died on 11 July 1991 in the Philippines. 37 See Francisco Santiago, The Development of Music in the Philippine Islands (Manila: The Institute of Pacific Relations, 1931), 16. 36 Ang Wika at mga Tugtugin, Bagong Lipang Kalabaw (October 7, 1922). 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. Clutario notes how the Tagalog word kiri had become synonymous with the flapper, one of the dominant symbols of Filipina modernity in the late 1920s.Footnote27 This particular strain of Filipina modernity corresponds to the ways in which new fashion and beauty regimens became strongly tied to perceptions and subsequent depictions of the babae ngayon (woman of today), sexually liberated in stark contrast to the ideal Filipina. Robert Schofield, then Dean of the Conservatory of Music at the University of the Philippines, asserted in 1922 that jazz was a sickness in the music of the Philippines, much like in the United States, and posed a danger to Filipino musicality.Footnote36 Outlining his vision for national music, Filipino composer Francisco Santiago also criticized the cheap dance music flooding the local music scene and warned against native composers adoption of American airs [] old cakewalk, the noisy march of Sousa, and the deafening and somewhat distorted jazz.Footnote37 Yet, ironically, Santiago also praised sarsuwela composers such as Juan Hernandez, Nicanor Abelardo, and Francisco Buencamino, all of whom had utilized jazz idioms in their compositions.Footnote38, De la Ramas performances on the bodabil stage, however, point to the critical role of the emerging popular entertainment industry in the very creation of a Filipino musical identity. 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. Perhaps it is only theater royalty who could get away with schooling their public. Figure 4. She frequently performed at rallies and events organized by various womens groups like Panitik Kababaihan (a womens literary society), Kaisahan ng Kababaihan sa Pilipinas (where she served as president), the Women Auxiliary of the Confederation of Labor Organization, and the Ladies Association in her hometown of Gagalangin, Tondo. 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. 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. 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. 2 The original text is in Spanish. MUSIC please help me() 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. 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. She firmly believed . 22 The article was derived from a booklet published by Columbia Gramophone Company with a letter written by Sawyer, dated November 23, 1914. [2], Atang de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. As such, her work serves as a critical example of an artists rewriting of gendered identities embedded in the text and music.

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