Jared Cardona South African Vocalist Extraordinaire!

In the fall of last year I came across a YouTube site called Puercultura A&R that is owned and maintained by a musician/vocal technique specialist, from South Africa.  At the time he was featuring a number of young student vocalists on his site.  As I began to view several of the videos, I was especially drawn to one young vocalist who I immediately recognized as a diamond in the rough!

When Jared Cardona introduced his first video, a cover of Billy Gilman’s song “One Voice”, I could immediately see that this youngster had both charisma and personality.  He was not a bit shy or timid in his performance and showed no sign of nervousness whatsoever. While maybe not a polished performer yet, Jared’s vocal was pure, clean, and pitch perfect in fact almost angelic like! This alone was a show stopping performance for me.

Jared sings cover of Billy Gilman’s “One Voice”. 

This debut video prompted me to leave a complementary comment on his instructors YouTube Site.  I had kind of forgotten about leaving the comment, but then a few weeks later I received a very nice letter inviting me to get in touch with them to learn more about Jared and his amazing natural singing talent.

While Jared’s background does not include a long litany of musical events or life experiences, his story begins uniquely just in the fact that his debut video presently has exceeded Twenty-Six Thousand views.

Jared was born in Durban South Africa on March 30^th, 1999. He attended school at St Henrys Marits Brothers from grade R to grade four. During those years Jared enrolled in speech and drama classes, but surprisingly never took up singing.

The following year Jared moved to Glenwood Prep for 5^th Grade and is presently enrolled in 7^th Grade.

Incredibly but true, it was only last year that Jared applied to join the choir at his school. His choir master made contact with his Mother soon after to tell her that Jared had been offered sponsored individual voice training lessons from a company based in the USA.  Jared has only been working with his vocal coach since July 2011 but sounds as if he has been training much longer.

It’s interesting to note that Jared’s first cover above was published to YouTube only two months after starting his lessons.  This truly demonstrates the fact that his raw natural talent only needed a little nurturing for him to perform so amazingly for the very first time.

Since that first video he has added a few more to the site doing a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory”, Vanessa Carlton’s “1000 Miles” and Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe”, as well as a few others that are not available on YouTube.

Jared is currently working on”Firefly” by Owl City, which will soon be published to the Puercultura YouTube Page for your enjoyment! I will do my best to add it here as soon as that is released!

Jared has always shown an interest in theatre, music and live stage acts from a very young age. His first ever “public” appearance was at a family friend’s wedding where he approached the groom of his own accord to ask if he could please sing a song. He was all of 5years old (see photo above),and took to standing on a chair in the front of the DJ table for all to see as he very confidently sang Avril Levine’s “Skater Boy”. He finished off with a standing ovation from the guests.

There is very seldom a time at home when Jared is not singing, be it while in the shower, kicking a ball outside or drawing. Jared is very creative and is often sketching airplanes, one of his big interests.

He has also had a long-time fascination with crocodiles, sharks and dolphins.  He loves animals and has said he would like to be a marine biologist or a pilot. But it’s easy to see and hear that Jared’s natural gift is in his singing ability.

While Jared was a baby he spent much of his time with his granny who used to rock him to sleep by dancing with him in her arms while playing soothing music. This, his mom says; must have been one of the factors that contributed to his love for music.

While there is no guarantee where a youngster exhibiting this much talent from the very beginning will end up, it can only be deducted that music will very much be a vital part of Jared’s life both now and in the future!

I for one became an instant fan and will be following Jared as he continues to fine tune his special gift.  While this introduction may be the first for Jared here today you can be sure that there will be many to follow in the months and years to come.

Jared sings and performs just for you! 

“Keep up the great work Jared the sky is the limit for you!”