Building on talent and positivity

It is another ordinary afternoon at Richland College. Buses, cars, and students are part of the scene. Suddenly, high notes started to fill the air throughout the parking lot close to the Red River Hall construction.

Jaime Hernandez’s chest is the fount of those melodic notes. Construction workers rest under the shade that the new building provides them during the lunchtime. Hernandez entertains his co-workers with his talent.

“I haven’t taken any classes at all. It has been like this all the time. My friends ask me to sing for them,” Hernandez said.

He is a welder from Guadalajara, Mexico, but has lived in the United States for two and a half years. Hernandez has 12 siblings and two of them live in the North Dallas area.

“I have a brother who sings in the church chorus back in my hometown,” Hernandez said.

His dad played the guitar in the church when he was younger too.

Hernandez sings banda songs, which is “a style of Mexican music and the musical ensemble in which wind instruments, mostly of brass, and percussion, are performed,” according to the dictionary.

Banda music is very popular in Hernandez’s hometown. He sings what his friends ask him to perform.

“When they ask me to sing a song, I sing what comes to my mind first,” Hernandez said. He is a little bit shy when he talks about his talent, but when Hernandez starts singing his personality changes.
He has not thought about entering a singing contest, although his natural talent is obvious.

If you step out of your car someday and hear a potent intoned voice, it will probably be Hernandez performing for his friends holding his hard hat and wearing his safety vest.

“I just try to be happy,” Hernandez said.