Change Makers: A Podcast from APH

APH Blind Musicians Collection

• American Printing House • Episode 122

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On this episode of Change Makers, learn about the APH Blind Musicians Collection and the beneficial services that the wonderful READS librarians provide.

Participants (In order of appearance)

  • Narrator
  • Veronica Palensky, Metadata and Information Services Librarian
  • Precious Perez, Musician who is blind

Additional Links


Narrator:

Welcome to Change Makers, a podcast from APH. We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or have low vision. Here's your host.

Sara Brown:

Hello and welcome to Change Makers. I'm APH's Public Relations Manager, Sara Brown, and today we are learning about the APH Blind Musicians Collection and the beneficial service that our wonderful Reads librarians provide. I have APH's Veronica Palensky and musician Precious Perez here to tell us more. Hello Veronica, hello Precious, and welcome to Change Makers.

Precious Perez:

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Super excited to be here. Thank you for having

Sara Brown:

And before we get rolling with this interview, would you like to share with our listeners what it is that you do? Precious, would you like to go first?

Precious Perez:

Sure. So my name is Precious Perez. I am a blind Puerto Rican woman with dark curly hair. I am a music artist, primarily Latin pop, also songwriter, author, educator, and disability advocate.

Veronica Palensky:

And my name is Veronica Polinsky. I am a metadata and information services librarian here at APH. I work primarily with the APH library, also with the Louis database and other reads related services.

Sara Brown:

Well, welcome both to Change Makers, and I'm so glad you're here. And this podcast is to talk about the Blind Musicians Collection. Veronica, would you like to let our listeners know exactly what that is?

Veronica Palensky:

Yes. So the Blind Musicians Collection is a part of the APH Library. It was started by a grant in 2015. The grant was from H.W. Wilson Foundation. And it was started by one of our librarians, who is now the Helen Keller Archivist, Justin Gardner. And it was started because... there was research done to look for a similar kind of collection. And we found that there wasn't a collection specifically focused on blind musicians. There were blind musicians and music collections and, you know, musicians and collections related to blindness, but nothing specifically just focused on this. So that's kind of the background.

Sara Brown:

Has this been something in the, you know, years in the making, or was it just to realize that, hmm, You know, how can we utilize music and spotlight our musicians that are blind or low vision?

Veronica Palensky:

So I think that the collection was really inspired by a performance from Michael Cleveland at the Kentucky School for the Blind just next door to APH. And after that performance, Justin was like... This needs to be something that's preserved. And so there is a lot of the collection that was already put together. So it was made up of primarily CDs, records, books related to musicians who are blind. And we recently got another grant to take it a little bit further to kind of to the next step. And talk about that next step. Are you able to share any details? Yes. So the main part, we actually received another grant from the H.W. Wilson Foundation to reinvent our listening, our music listening station. And Basically, before it was in where the library is, which as you know, where APH is closed to the public right now, so we haven't had the library available for visitors for a while, but it was just an iPad that had music loaded to it that people could interact with. And it was great in what it was then, but we wanted to re-envision it to have more physical media and allow people to interact with the physical media in a interesting and accessible ways. So the listening station will in the future have, it has a record player, it has a CD player, and it also utilizes the APH Joy Player, which is a music playing device that APH actually produces.

Sara Brown:

Okay, Precious, and you're here because you are a musician who is blind or low vision. Would you like to talk about how you got into music?

Precious Perez:

Absolutely. So I have been involved in music since I was probably about six years old or so. I knew at that time that I wanted to sing. I was painfully shy as a kid, which is really hard to imagine now. But I would kind of sing with my little karaoke machine and record myself in my room with my little tape cassettes and the radio. And then I participated in music class in elementary school, and that was kind of my first... into kind of like, wow, I can actually do this. And so over the years, I did talent shows, participated in chorus and started writing my own songs eventually in middle school. And then I took a lot of different music classes in high school and ended up going to college, Berkeley College of Music and graduating with a double degree in education and performance. And then at that point, I released my very first album with the help of my high school music teacher and producer based in Massachusetts. And that's kind of kicked off my entire music career.

Sara Brown:

And have you played anywhere interesting, any notable locations with your music? Yes. So I've actually played

Precious Perez:

the Kennedy Center in D.C., as a headlining concert on the Millennium Stage in 2023. I also played the Lincoln Center in New York that same year. Wow, that's huge.

Sara Brown:

Talk about the importance of the Blind Musicians Collection and its importance and how you feel about APH having such a thing Precious.?

Precious Perez:

Absolutely. So I...actually grew up with a lot of APH products. I love APH and I work as a dot experience education associate currently. And so it's been really exciting to kind of be on the other side and seeing how these products are made and like the people behind them. And the listening station in particular is super powerful because not only is it a reflection of all of the incredible blind musicians that are out here, but it's also like fully accessible. Every player, the players are labeled, the CDs are labeled, the records are labeled. Everything is accessible to the degree of like, I would, if this were in a record store or in a music store or any situation, I would be able to interact with it independently. And it's just so cool. All of the different options and all of the different subsets of music available and representing blind musicians in the industry. So that's really, really powerful to me.

Sara Brown:

Now, Veronica and Precious, can you name some of the notable musicians in the industry? I feel like we all know and absolutely adore Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, but there's so many more.

Precious Perez:

Jose Feliciano comes to mind. He is a Puerto Rican guitarist and also known for "Feliz Navidad," which everybody knows, but I'm particularly biased towards him because I'm a fellow Boricua, so I'm just very excited about the fact that he's in the collection. And it's just really exciting to see that kind of representation of different intersecting communities as well.

Veronica Palensky:

Yeah. And there's a big variety of blind musicians that we have represented in the collection. There is a lot, a large amount of blues representation. That's a really big genre, but there's also like one of my favorite musicians who was a very like experimental musician is Moondog. And I think he was, he's a really interesting character and we have some records of his. We also have some CDs. So yeah, that's a, that's a big one that I really like as well.

Sara Brown:

And Veronica, can you talk about the importance of having a Blind Musicians Collection?

Veronica Palensky:

For sure. So one of the reasons behind kind of the so what or the purpose of the collection at its inception was that blindness and music go hand in hand historically. So music was a way for a lot of individuals who are blind or low vision to be able to be independent and make a living, make an income, because it is in a lot of ways a very accessible medium. art form. So it's kind of the history of blind musicians is also the history of the blindness field in general. And that's one of the main things that we try, we want to focus on and preserve with the APH library.

Precious Perez:

It's essentially disability culture, right? Like blindness and blindness history, art and our words and our stories are really in that art. And so that's really powerful to me because I also serve as president of an organization called RAMT, which stands for Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities. And what we do is provide the industry with inclusive tools and strategies for musicians and music professionals that are navigating the music industry space. And so we have partnerships with the Grammys. And Live Nation, and we worked with a bunch of other people in the industry, really uplifting and celebrating disability and disability culture in the industry and amplifying our stories. And so something like this is really powerful, I think, just not only for the historic factor, but also just for the awareness factor of society and the world to know like, this is disability culture, and we're proud of it.

Sara Brown:

As you know, just from everything that I've learned from my time and in this interview, in this field, music is extremely accessible. Exactly. Can you talk about the importance of the fact that music is accessible that allows others to be able to participate in it? That might be blind or low vision.

Veronica Palensky:

Yeah. Music is something that everyone can connect over. There are so many different genres. I myself am also a musician. So this was a really special... Whenever I found out that we had a Blind Musicians Collection here, I got really excited because I love working with music collections. And this one just was so important. And it's an accessible art form in that it's a kind of You don't need a lot to appreciate it because people can, you just need to be able to be around it and be surrounded by it. It's something that there's all different levels that allow for participation. and even people who maybe if you even if you're like deaf you could still you know enjoy like vibrations and things like that and go to concerts it's something that it's a very like precious was saying like on a cultural sense it's something that connects the human race in a lot of ways so

Precious Perez:

Yeah, I agree. And I think that it's just a really incredible way to celebrate and uplift and come together in a medium that everyone can understand. Because, you know, even if music is in a different language, like I create music in English and in Spanish, but even if you don't understand what I'm saying all the time, you can still kind of groove to it and understand the feeling and the connection and the It's incredible. And it's fantastic that we have something like this to bring us together because it's definitely, like you said, a part of culture, but also it's something that anyone can pick up, can enjoy and interact with no matter what their disability or identity might be.

Sara Brown:

All right. So can you talk about the Spotify playlist? How did that come about?

Veronica Palensky:

So because the Blind Musicians Collection is a physical collection that's housed at APH, we wanted a way for people all across the world to be able to interact with the collection. So we created the Spotify playlist as a way to share the various musicians that are included. We also have a number of musicians who have reached out through our Blind Musicians suggestion forum who maybe don't have, in today's day and age, a lot of people don't have physical CDs anymore. And I am a physical media lover, but I also understand why you might not have that. Most people are available on Spotify. So we add them to our list as kind of like in archival speak. It's a way to keep track of various musicians that are available to that are part of the collection in various ways.

Sara Brown:

Yeah. And you just answered the next question was how do you source artists? So do they be just sort of, do they come to you to be on the Spotify playlist or do you go out looking or do they just sort of fall into place? How does that happen?

Veronica Palensky:

It's kind of a variety of ways. So a lot of it at the beginning, especially was done through digging. Also my, my personal knowledge, previous staff's personal knowledge and, and, But we knew that there's no way for all of us to know about every single person. So we created this. There is a form and it is listed. It's on the APH website and it is a blind musician suggestion form. It's under the like get involved section of the website. And I think that there's a section that says like fill out a form. Okay. And it's just a suggestion for adding materials to either the playlist or we also take that list and purchase materials because I love whenever somebody suggests a musician that we don't have because we have quite a few. There's like... I want to say after the last collection development, we probably have about 300 musicians represented in the collection, but we know that there's more that we're missing out there. So we're always happy for someone to suggest, even if you want to just email, ask a librarian, like just there's multiple ways to get in contact with us and we will take all forms.

Sara Brown:

And before I let you all go, is there anything else you would like to share or talk about?

Veronica Palensky:

I um, I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I wanted to point out, say that the APH library is the largest collection of non-medical resources related to blindness and low vision. So it being part of this, and that's hosted here at APH. So the Blind Musicians Collection being part of that library is a really important way to understand the context of the collection and also to understand I also just want to highlight the APH library in general, that it's a really great resource. And if you are interested in learning more about the APH library, you can go to the Louis database, go to louis.aph.org slash APH dash library. And the more information about what's held in the collection is there. I also want to highlight the Spotify playlist for the Blind Musicians Collection. We have a number of different playlists within that. So we have one for African American music. We had a holiday one. I'm also working on a Blind Musicians for Children's playlist. So a lot of fun stuff. And then one other thing I wanted to point out is that the listening station is going to be At APH is going to be more for like visitors to APH. We are going to publish about it and share the resources that we use to make it accessible so that other people can replicate it.

Sara Brown:

And Veronica, talk more about this library department. Let our listeners know exactly, you know, what can they find out if somebody wanted to learn a little bit more?

Veronica Palensky:

Definitely. So at the APH Library, we have a number of different collections. So one of the collections we have is the MC Miguel Memorial Collection, which actually originally came from AFB. And it is a historical collection that focuses on the cultural aspects of blindness. So we have all kinds of things like we collect materials from blind authors. Precious actually shared me a number of authors that are all contemporary authors. Thank you so much. like older historical research related to blindness, there are a variety of things that have been digitized and are available on Internet Archive. So if you're interested, you can, again, go to the APH Library's website, which is part of the Louis database, and kind of just search different things and see a variety of resources that are available. Also, if you are looking for something specific on the Louis website, which is, again, louis.aph.org, there is an ask a librarian tab where you can reach out to us if and ask for things related to blindness and culture we do a lot we do research for people with the collection and we also take donations for the collection so if you are if you wanted if you have written a book and it's not included you can let us know about that if you are in like a university program and you have a thesis related to blindness and low vision we want to kind of just everything we want to tell the story of blindness and culture and in history and preserving it through the library is is our main goal so we're kind of it's we kind of take everything on and we love to collaborate with people

Precious Perez:

I'm so excited to be a part of this with you, Veronica. I know we had a great chat. Yeah, we did. And I... I'm really excited to also have my stuff in this collection, which is really cool. I feel kind of like a fangirl, as you would say. It's so cool to just be a part of this and connected to such a big community of professionals that are also in the industry and bringing all of these things together. I do want to share... my specific um handles if anyone is interested um i am under Precious Perez Musica on all social media m-u-s-i-c-a and um precious perez on Spotify so um thank you so so much this has been really awesome.

Sara Brown:

Wonderful, well Ii will be sure to put the link to the spotify playlist as well as the websites that were mentioned during this podcast Precious, Veronica, thank you both so much for coming on Changemakers and talking to me today.

Veronica Palensky:

Thank you, Sara, for having me. It's been wonderful.

Precious Perez:

Yes, thank you. It's an honor to be here.

Sara Brown:

I've put links in the show notes to the Blind Musicians Collection, the APH Reads Library, as well as the Spotify playlist. Do you have any questions about this podcast? Send them my way by sending an email to changemakers@aph.org. And as always, be sure to look for ways you can be a changemaker this week.