Honorata "Atang" Dela Rama: First Pinay Film Actress

The very first Filipina film actress and all around artist was Honorata Dela Rama-Hernandez, more popularly known as Atang Dela Rama. She was born on the 11th of January in 1902. She was also a famous singer and bodabil or vaudeville performer as well as a renowned stage and theater artist. Atang was an active theater producer, writer and talent manager too. She was an icon and a paragon of Philippine art and culture and was also a staunch proponent of Philippine musical plays focusing on current issues known as zarzuela and also traditional folk songs known as kundiman.

Atang grew up in Tondo, Manila and by the age of 7 began appearing in Spanish zarzuelas such as Marina, Mascota and Sueño de un Vals. She became widely known after singing the song Nabasag na Banga while starring in the zarzuela Dalagang Bukid when she was 15 years old. Dalagang Bukid later became the first locally produced Tagalog film in the country where Atang portrayed the same role that she played in the zarzuela. She later wrote and produced the plays Bulaklak ng Kabundukan and Anak ni Eba as well as also appeared in the drama Veronidia. It was her performance though in Pangarap ni Rosa which Atang recounts as her most satisfying and rewarding role. She played it with such realism that the teary-eyed audience threw silver coins into the stage at the end of the play to show their support and admiration.

Aside from the zarzuela, Atang also vigorously supported kundiman. Among the kundiman and the other songs that she popularized or premiered were Pakiusap, Ay, Ay Kalisud, Mutya ng Pasig by Deogracias Rosario and Nicanor Abelardo, and Kung Iibig Ka and Madaling Araw by Jose Corazon de Jesus. She also wrote these other classic and well-loved zarzuelas: Aking Ina and Puri at Buhay. Atang firmly believed that the zarzuela and the kundiman best expresses the Filipino soul, and so she has even made an effort to perform zarzuelas, kundiman and other traditional Filipino folk songs for the indigenous peoples of the Philippines like the Aetas or Negritos of Zambales and the Sierra Madre, the Bagobos of Davao and other Lumad of Mindanao, the Igorots up north and the reclusive Mangyans. At the height of her career, she also sang and performed in concerts in such cities as Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City.

Formally honored as the Queen of Kundiman in 1979, Atang was also proclaimed as a National Artist of the Philippines for Theater and Music on the 8th of May in 1987 by then President Corazon Aquino. She was married to National Artist for Literature, Amado Hernandez, and lived a quiet life before she died on the 11th of July in 1991.