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. 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. Deflecting the advances of this suitor, Angelita elopes with her childhood sweetheart, the law student Cipriano. 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. Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, de la Rama continued to cross over from one performing media to another, breaking expectations of traditional Filipina femininity while asserting her own creative authority. 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. In the final repetition of the songs chorus, de la Rama plays out affective vocal nuances with the pronounced slowness of her delivery. 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. 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. 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. 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. Their repartee turns into de la Rama singing about the method of cooking the rice cake with fire below and on top and how her bibingka is much sought after for its extra stickiness and its full toppings of egg and cheese. 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. 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. 19 Doreen Fernandez, Zarzuela to Sarswela: Indigenization and Transformation, Philippine Studies 41, no. Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? 20 Remigio Mat Castro, Nabasag ang Banga? 1/2 (1997): 12850, at 141. 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. Castros remarks on the artists rendition of Awit ng Pagkahibang and the reactions it elicited from the audience drives home the centrality of performance in the conception of a musical and theatrical work. Continue your trip to show other nations and whites our capacity for all kinds of pursuits and that we also have artists that we can be proud of!Footnote46 Such adulation underlines de la Ramas inextricable connection to the song form and her role in crafting kundimans canonic place in Philippine music. Fernando Amorsolos Campesina (Peasant, 1927). 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. By 1925, de la Cruz was the highest paid . al., Fashionable Filipinas, 141. 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 patriotic anthem Bayan Ko (My Country), perhaps the most famous and enduring kundiman in Philippine music history, was also popularized by de la Rama.Footnote42 Yet standard accounts ignore the critical role she played, instead tracing the development of the kundiman from its origins in a handful of songs created during the Revolutionary period at the turn of the twentieth century to the art songs of the conservatory composers. De la Ramas personal writings hint that she engaged directly in this balancing act between private and public life. 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. Atang Dela Rama Angelita Mar I. Esmeralda Director Jose Nepomuceno Writers Leon Ignacio (story) Hermogenes Ilagan (story) All cast & crew Production, box office & more at IMDbPro Storyline Edit Did you know Trivia Considered as the first Filipino movie made. Karen Henson (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 1123, at 20. 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. This treaty ceded the Philippines (along with Puerto Rico and Guam) to the United States in the aftermath of the Spanish-American war. 70 Her postwar film credits include Batong Buhay (1950), Salome (1952), Siga, Siga (1953), Rigiding (1954), Ang Buhay at Pag-ibig ni Dr. Jose Rizal (1955). 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. 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). For de la Rama, however, her self-fashioning style became an integral component of her status as a celebrity and a commanding artist. See also Fernandez, Palabas, 8889. Such standardization of the classical kundiman includes a slow triple meter and a three-part form structure (the first two sections set in minor and the final section in the parallel major), which mirror the poetic narrative of anti-colonial struggle.Footnote41. 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 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 Lacnico-Buenaventura, The Theater in Manila, 88. The other women awardees largely belonged to performing arts categories. 2 (2010): 35988, at 361. 49 Enriquez, Appropriation of Colonial Broadcasting, 10910. Proseguid, vuestro viaje, para dar a conocer a otras naciones y a los blancos nuestra capacidad para toda clase de menesteres, y que tambin tenemos artistas de quienes podemos enorgullecernos!. 25 Schenker, Empire of Syncopation, 25657. 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. Postwar productions changed the title to Ang Masayang Dalaga (The Happy Maiden), which reflects a subtler variation of the dalagang haliparot type. 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. 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. Cultural Center of the Philippines. [3] De la Rama was a force to be reckoned with, and hers was an indefatigable presence that persisted in the distinct (but still loosely connected) networks of the sarsuwela stage, vaudeville, film, and radio. 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. Queen of the Kundiman and. 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. 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). At the age of 15, she starred in the sarsuela Dalagang Bukid, where she became known for singing the song "Nabasag na Banga". 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). This short song features de la Ramas use of vocal slides and a gruff timbre that intensifies as she sings the final verse: What seemed like an innocent and playful depiction of the mundane becomes tinged with innuendo as de la Ramas rendition of the final verse elicits boisterous and knowing laughter from her partner Ocampo. 38 Santiago, The Development of Music in the Philippine Islands, 516. 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.
Where On Earth Can You Find Transform Boundaries?,
Nmc Hospital Dubai Covid Vaccine Appointment,
Objectivity In Journalism Pdf,
How Much Do Nfl Players Get Paid Per Game,
Articles A