Top 100 Cebuano Personalities: Dulce

CEBU, Philippines — Dream big – that’s what Cebuana singing sensation Dulce has always done.

Born in July 1961, Maria Teresa Magdalena Llamedo began singing at two years old. A native of Villa Bulsita, Bulacao Pardo in Cebu City, she forced her way into an amateur singing contest stage as a toddler, humming to the tune of “Gimingaw Ako” – simply because she missed her father who was away on a construction job.

So strong was her desire to sing that she would run off to queue for auditions, despite the cinders on her arms from cooking, joining competitions with her disapproving mother none the wiser.

Growing up below the poverty line, she knew that she could use her talent to somehow provide for her family. After helping in the camote and rice fields, she would bring home soy sauce, ketchup and pancit – her winnings from barangay singing contests.

She frequented auditions and tirelessly went to TV and radio stations despite being told she was not beautiful enough to be a singer, that she had terrible song choices and that she was trying too hard. She had a door literally shut on her face at the tender age of 10.

Persistent as ever, she began dreaming of sailing to Manila at 12 years old.

It wasn’t until two years later that she got her first break. She was 14 years old when she joined “Tawag ng Tanghalan” and would go on to win the weekly and monthly stages in 1975.

She then joined the Metro Manila Popular Song Festival. But not long after, her mother dragged her home, objecting to how talent scouts made her barely teenage daughter sing at night clubs along Roxas Boulevard.

At 16, she ran away from home in pursuit of a career. She interpreted once more for Metro Pop the year after. Later in the same year of 1978, she recorded “Dulce Amor,” the theme song for a Lorna Tolentino film. As the track became a hit, so was born her stage name of Dulce.

Recording up to 30 songs for popular movies, Dulce was hailed Theme Song Queen and began to take on even bigger stages.

In 1979, she was handpicked to represent the Philippines in Hong Kong for the fourth Asian Songfest where she won with the now iconic piece “Ako Ang Nasawi, Ako Nagwagi.”

She was also offered a place in “Miss Saigon” but had to decline.

Dulce, who also won the Asia Pacific Singing Contest in 1988, has received awards like the Highest Achievement Award from the Salamat Music Summer Voice Workshop in 1994, and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 from the Aliw Awards.

From then on, she has been called Asia’s Diva, Asia’s Singing Champion, and Timeless Diva.

Now 57 years old, Dulce appears in ABS-CBN shows, such as in the judging panel of “It’s Showtime’s” Tawag ng Tanghalan, the competition that started it all for her. She is still very much present on stage, constantly doing shows in Cebu and throughout the country.