With a part of his lips, he opens his mouth and begins to use his voice as a musical instrument, revealing his performance skills produced by his 14-year experience in music.

Hamid Ala, 32, vocal performance major, has been studying voice for 14 years and hopes to get his masters and PHD at USC School of Music and dreams of becoming an EC voice professor.

Recently, he was accepted as a music major at Cal State University at Long Beach where he attends The Bob Cole Conservatory of Music School.

Ala has been taking courses at EC simultaneously.

Born with cerebral palsy brain damage, Ala had more to overcome than others. Instead of dealing with the stress and frustration that came along with his disability, he found an alternative way to deal with it.

“All my life, I’ve always loved to sing,” Ala said. “It helped me deal with hardships that came with having CP; it took my mind off of all my frustrations.”

When Ala enrolled in EC, he became a part of the student learning resource center for disabled students and took college a step at a time.

Ala’s instructors all knew how much he loved to sing, so they told him to take a voice class with Hedley Nosworthy, voice professor.

“Everyone talked about Professor Nosworthy’s voice class and how he won singing competitions all over the world,” Ala said. “At first I was very intimidated, and I didn’t believe I was cut out for his class, but I knew it would help me deal with my CP stress, so I enrolled.”

After a couple voice classes, Ala spoke with Nosworthy one day after class and told him he was going to drop the class because he felt like his disability was getting in the way of learning.

Fortunately, Nosworthy didn’t allow that to get in Ala’s way of becoming the singer he’s always wanted to be, Ala said.

“When we started working together he could not even match pitch,” Nosworthy said.  “In a short time he was able to do it and has not looked back since.”

After many extra hours of voice lessons during Nosworthy’s office hours, Ala learned to sing classical music in four different languages.

“Everyone told me it was impossible for me to sing classical music because I had CP and speaking in English was difficult enough for me,” Ala said. “But I wanted to prove them wrong and so I learned how to sing in English, Italian, German and French.”

“I have been here at El Camino for 21 years and have never come across such a person who challenges the status quo regularly,” Nosworthy said.  “Bluntly, I find him amazing. He has conquered aspects of vocal performance that some students only dream about.”

Ala also passed an audition for Disney, where he sang a piece from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” called “God Bless the Outcast.”

“People flocked to his standard and realized quite fully his uniqueness and potential,” Nosworthy said. “I’m told that some of the execs were even crying.”

Singing, Ala said, has taught him what is important in life.

“When I sing it’s not about me,” Ala said. “It’s about showing other disabled and not disabled students to live their dreams, have hope, love everyone and not worry about silly problems.”