Jimmy Cuellar began his musical career at the age of 5.

He took violin lessons and workshops, but it wasn’t until he reached high school that he realized that music is what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

“I wanted to be involved in music in some way,” said Cuellar, 19, a Bakersfield College music composition major. “Whether writing lyrics or performing songs.”

In 2000, he received the Nuestro Mundo Award for arranging and composition. That same year he won the Senior Music Award at Highland High School.

Cuellar won the Statewide Young Composers Award in January from the Music Association of Community Colleges for his work called “Rainfalls,”an instrumental piano song he wrote. The song was previously started as a simple exercise for a class, but he ended up liking it and sent it to the San Francisco contest.

“I have no special method of getting inspiration in my music,” said Cuellar. “Whenever I get an idea in my head I see how far I can take it.”

The song sounded like raindrops, inspiring the title, he added.

He later received a call from his music professor that he had won first place.

Two months later, Cuellar received his first place award with $600. It was an open statewide event that featured more than 50 community colleges, an event that received more than 100 entries.

He recently received a full scholarship to Texas Tech University to help start up a mariachi band within the campus. Cuellar was recruited along with 10 other mariachi performers.

Texas Tech intended on bringing in a mariachi band to help it enter and win competitions in the future according to Cuellar.

Besides piano, writing lyrics and violin, he also can play a little guitar. He also remixes different genres of music and adds musical instrumentals to poetry from his home computer.

Cuellar can be seen with the Bakersfield mariachi band called Gariboldi, which is led by his father, Jaime Cuellar.

The group has 10 members and Cuellar is among the most experienced people in the group, he said, entering his fourth year with the band. The band splits the money earned at events.

Aside from being part of the group, he also writes a lot of the band’s material.

He also aids his father, who teaches a mariachi class at California State University, Bakersfield, and teaches his own mariachi band in Porterville called the Fiesta Mexicana.

“My dad always wanted me to be involved in music in some way,” said Cuellar.

“It’s pretty convenient that I love music as much as he does.”