Pitt State’s Hispanic Music Festival brought Banda Camp and Pittsburg Hispanic Banda to downtown Pittsburg for a performance at the ArtWalk on Sept. 19. The groups, which are made up of Pitt State students, alumni and community members, performed at 3 p.m. on Broadway.
The performance was part of the third annual Hispanic Music Festival, which was founded in 2024 by Isaac Hernandez and Frida Herrera. The festival consists of events held during Hispanic Heritage month, and was created to showcase guest performers, as well as performers in the community.
Though the festival has been active for three years, this year is the first year the Hispanic Music Festival worked with and performed at the ArtWalk. Isaac Hernandez, organizer and co-founder of the event, explains why participating in the community is important to the organization.
“I always say when people come to your house and they look through your window, you want them to look through the prettiest window to the prettiest room,” Hernandez says. “We want to show the community the best parts of the Hispanic culture.”
Hernandez is also a music professor at Pitt State and has performed with many music groups throughout his career. He stated that his goal for the audience at the ArtWalk is for them to enjoy the performances, have fun, eat good food, and dance along to the music if they’d like.
The Pittsburg Hispanic Banda was started by Hernandez and includes Pitt State alumni and students. According to Pitt State, some of the alumni involved in the group are band directors around the area. The group serves as a way for the festival to connect university musicians to the community around them.
Chloe Nickelson, a sophomore psychology major born and raised in Pittsburg, explains why she thinks the event is important for the community.
“As someone who learned Spanish as a second language, I think it’s really important to show the culture to a community who may not know much about it,” she says. “It’s great to see something new like this at the art walk and everyone sounds great.”
According to Hernandez, making the gap between the university and community smaller is important because it brings people together. The groups performing also included high school music students from in and around the Pittsburg area.
“We try to work with different schools around the area,” Hernandez says. “Then we give them the music we play so they can look at it and practice it.”
Hernandez explains that the students practice the music for a couple weeks to prepare for the performance, giving them an opportunity to play with experienced musicians around the community.
Later in the evening, the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra performed outside of St. Mary’s Colgan school at 6p.m as part of the Community Festival Hispano. The orchestra is made up of graduates from the Latin jazz studies program at the Latin Jazz Institute, along with other established professionals and visiting artists. The ensemble, led by percussionist Pablo Sanhueza, is meant to bring together musicians and artists, old and new, to celebrate the traditions of Latin jazz and salsa.
