47 Savoy Nifties New Spanish Ballet, The Tribune (January 24, 1925). On December 7, 1919, the Compaa Ilagan staged the Tagalog sarsuwelaFootnote1 Dalagang Bukid (Country Maiden) for the benefit of its star artist, Honorata Atang de la Rama (19021991), whose public entreaty can be found in the productions playbill: Beloved public: your dalagang bukid gives her benefit Sunday night If you come to see me I will cry with joy and delight; but if you do not honor me with your presence, I will truly mourn, much like how Angelita cries when she is disappointed with her beloved Cipriano. De la Rama on the front cover of The Womans Outlook (July 1926 Issue). 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. Atang de la Rama was born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1902. 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. 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. See also Angel Velasco and Luis Francia, Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999 (New York: New York University Press, 2002). 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. De la Ramas performances transformed the kundiman into a particularly potent musical and cultural symbol of Filipino identity. 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. Her work highlights the role of the performer as an equally important locus of creative authorship as that ascribed to playwrights and composers. 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. Born in Pandacan, Manila on January 11, 1905, she was already starring in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueo de un Vals, and Marina by the age of five. 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. Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. Following her leading role debut in Dalagang Bukid, de la Rama had gained a reputation that quickly spread among the theater-going public of Manila. As Nabasag ang Banga progresses, however, the playfulness she adds to her interpretation slowly complicates the image of the meek and virginal Filipina. At this same time, Manilas moralists and staunch nationalists accused the bodabil stage of peddling in vulgarity and criticized its performance of American jazz.
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