Ximena Perez, Board Member

Throughout her whole life, Ximena Perez was always exposed to music. She comes from, as she describes it, “a very musical family.” Back home in Chile, her mother and siblings were in a family band called the Piranhas.

“The story behind that is they would sing two songs and then eat the food at wherever they were rehearsing,” she explains.

Even with her family having such a strong musical background, Ximena was always interested in music ever since she was a kid. As she describes it, music is in her blood.

“I seem to recall singing songs on the radio when I was quite young. I have a very vivid memory of singing Elvira as a little girl when I was, like, 5,” she said. “It’s always been a part of me. It’s always been in my blood and my genes.”

She eventually became involved with Braille Tones in the early days when it began as a public speaking group. She remembers them meeting every Saturday morning to “get lessons on how to speak in front of a crowd without being nervous,” and she stayed with them as they gradually shifted their focus into music.

“They wanted to get some people together with low vision or no vision and see if they could teach us to speak publicly without using notes. And that just evolved.”

Through her time at Braille Tones, Ximena says that the one thing that really stuck with her as the years went on are the number of visual references in the music they were performing, most notably in the lyrics, which for her, someone with a visual impairment, is “funny.”

“You don’t really notice it when you have your vision, but it was funny because he would bring songs to us and there would be a visual reference. And it’s just so funny because there’s so many references to vision in music and so we kinda have fun with it. It’s been a while since we’ve done it, but I’m always ready for a good visual reference.”

Being with Braille Tones has really helped with building further on Ximena’s confidence and made her a stronger musician overall, even if she was never a shy person to begin with.

“I like showing off my skills, musically especially,” she explains. “I find myself taking my ukulele everywhere now, which I learned through them. They’ve definitely given me a lot of self-confidence.”

Written by Chris Ranta