(♪♪♪) (narrator): In Madrid, jazz singer Cristina Diaz shares her love of music with us.

- (dubbed): I always say that losing my sight gave me the opportunity to actually do what I wanted most - to make music.

- And the streets of Montreal are a happier place thanks to Alvino Forbes.

- I like to use music as a way to facilitate bringing people together, have a sense of belonging, define joy and meaning through life.

- They're two positive people who are doing it their way with no regrets.

Blind or partially-sighted, the musicians featured in this series are living out their musical dreams.

They teach us to be true to ourselves, no matter what.

Their stories are examples of hard work, dedication and passion that let us al share in the wonder of truly... seeing music.

- (dubbed): I'm Cristina Dia and we're in the city of Madrid.

It's a big city and public transit is the best way to get around.

It's very accessible.

They've put in a lot of stations with elevators, the crosswalks are all marked, and buses have proper signs.

I'm used to it here, I think I have a good life here.

I like living in Madrid.

- (narrator): Here we are in Spain - but forget the cliches of flamenco or castanets.

Cristina, who is both a performer and a composer, is crazy about just one thing - and that's jazz.

(singing in Spanish) - Music has always been a part of my life, ever since I was born.

I remember being at home singing as a child.

(singing in Spanish) I mostly consider myself a singer because I don't have much musical knowledge.

I'm more of a composer, an inventor of songs.

(♪♪♪) I always say that losing m sight gave me the opportunity to actually do what I wanted most - to make music.

I have a degenerative disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa.

It first affected me when I was 10 and I had a sudden loss of vision.

I went from seeing 100% to seeing 10%.

I finished my degree in psychology and started working in my field.

When I lost almost all of my sight and had to stop working, I decided it was time to dedicate myself to what I'd always wanted.

(singing in Spanish) - (narrator): Soon, the last of the snow will be gone from Montreal's skyscrapers an spring will be here at last.

The return of good weather also means the return of migratory birds, and dozens of these city slickers will happily settle back in around the streets and parks of the neighbourhood.

(singing) The voice that's resonating across Laurier Park is that of Alvino Forbes, a musician from the Bahamas.

He was born prematurely, which caused his blindness, but he sings about how happy he is at the top of his lungs.

(singing) - When I first arrived in Montreal, the first Sunday I was here, I could hear drums beat coming from miles away, and I'm like, what is this?

It sounds like something in the Bahamas, where we have music going on all the time.

So, for me, it's quite a musical city.

(singing) I'm walking on the streets, here, in Montreal, in the Plateau.

I'm going to La Petite Marche.

It's a restaurant and bar, and they also provide music, so I'm going to play the piano there.

I'm a musician I play a variety of instruments.

Accordion, a bit of the mandolin as well as a bit of violin and clarinet and piano.

(♪♪♪) We grew up in an orphanage, my twin brother and I.

And so, he and I both lived in an orphanage until 18 years old.

I did, I learned music.

I went to a special school for blind kids.

And it was at this school I encountered a very talented musician wh himself is visually impaired.

We were classmates in the Bahamas.

And I was inspired by his talent.

And I just was flabbergasted.

I was like, if he can do this, I too can learn how to play.

I feel like the rhythm and the way the melodies are arranged each in their very own way kind of speak to me.

It fills me with a sense of being joyful to express my appreciation for life.

And also to share that with others.

(♪♪♪) Cristina meets up with her longtime collaborator, pianist Carolina Loureiro, in a room belonging to ONCE, an important organization that offers support to those with visual disabilities in Spain.

(singing in Spanish) Carolina, who herself lives with a visual disability, has a busy music career.

She has a trio which bears her name, she composes, she sings and she teaches.

As a matter of fact before she became her friend, Cristina was actually once her student.

(singing in Spanish) - (Carolina, dubbed): And then we go back.

(singing in Spanish) I always thought of Cristina as a student who laughed a lot.

She'd try out a new idea and if she liked it, she'd laugh and say, that was beautiful.

She was always my happiest student.

That's how I think of her when she was my piano student for a few months.

- (dubbed): After that, in 2015, I decided to do a Jazz project in Spanish.

I spoke to her and she said she liked the idea.

(♪♪♪) So, I started taking some jazz standards and adapting them into Spanish respecting the meaning of the lyrics.

I wanted to respect the meaning of the English lyrics.

And together we started creating the jazz standards project.

I called the project Alma de Jazz and we debuted in Oviedo.

(singing in Spanish) - (Carolina): Cristina is always thinking up new ideas.

She was the one who proposed doing the famous jazz standard songs in Spanish.

And after that, she said why not do our own music?

Sometimes she'd suggest simple ideas where I could easily see the harmony and arrangements behind the song.

And other times, I'd say, Cristina, I don't understand, what is this, is it blues, swing?

And she'd say, I don't know I don't think of it that way.

I'd say, well listen.

- ♪♪ Dragon lands and golden temples ♪ ♪ Witnessed your birth ♪ I'd go singing it to her, since I can't sing the song and tell her the chords at the same time.

I'd sing and she'd internalise it.

- Until we found a point where the song would become what Cristina wanted and where I could also be happy with the musical arrangements.

It was a huge collaboration up until the album was recorded.

- (narrator): The release of their album Luna Azul in 2017 was, for Cristina, the culmination of a very personal artistic journey.

The album consists of ten songs which she wrote herself, including one which is specially dedicated to her daughter.

(singing in Spanish) - Tesoro oriental has a very concrete story behind it.

It's dedicated to my daughter, who was adopted from China.

Tesoro oriental is the song I have the most affection for on the album because it's a very emotional song for me.

(singing in Spanish) - (narrator): In the Bahamas, Alvino didn't have access to specialized programs that would have given him formal music training.

Instead, he learned on his own, by ear, to the delight of passerbys who are now treated to daily concerts in the streets of Montreal.

- I normally play outside the metro, especially when it's nice weather or in the summer.

I often play with friends or by myself.

And occasionally inside, but it's much better outside.

The music that speaks to me a lot would be folkloric music from Quebec.

Also, celtic music as well as calypso and gumbe.

These are different rhythms and genres from the Bahamas.

And also, cumbia, so a bit of Latin music.

I'm just hanging out here in front of metro Laurier.

I've come to play the mandolin.

This was kind of an instrument I could carry around and just pull out anywhere and start jamming with other people.

However, I find myself very limited with the mandolin because they're metal strings.

And the trade-off is if I continue to advance in playing the mandolin and different techniques and styles, I will develop a lot of calluses on my fingertips, which would decrease my ability for reading Braille.

And that's also something I love doing, being able to get books and read them.

Or even the fact of learning Braille music.

(♪♪♪) I often encounter interesting people while playing in the metro.

(♪♪♪) If I'm in the streets walking, I find myself just singing in my head or dancing.

It's always an adventure for me, I find.

Life always brings me a surprise or throws a curveball at me when I play in the metro or in certain public spaces.

(♪♪♪) - (narrator): When it come to her art, Cristina receives unconditional support from her partner Joaquin, who accompanies her to every performance.

They started out as just friends, but little by little they fell in love.

She finds him to be an ideal romantic partner.

- (Cristina): I'm much happie with a visually impaired partner because, obviously, a sighted person can help you in a lot of things, but a blind partne can understand you much better.

We fit together in everything because we understand each other, we have the same challenges.

- (narrator): The couple share an apartment in Carabanchel, one of Madrid's most crowded neighbourhoods.

- For two visually impaired people to live together, the most important thing is order.

We need to know where things are and that they won't change spots.

- (Joaquin, dubbed): The kitchen is my domain.

I'm a bit of a maniac about it, no one's allowed in while I'm around.

It's as she says, it's a question of order.

The thing is, someone who can see leaves things here and there because they can see them.

The problem is, if you can't see and someone puts something in a different spot, it's very challenging.

Imagine you're blindfolded and we tell you to take a frying pan, add oil and turn it on.

Once it's hot, without seeing crack an egg, add it to the pan, and with a whis beat it and then take it out.

Try it one day blindfolded, and see if it's really so easy to cook an egg.

To adapt, the most important thing is to accept your reality.

Once you've accepted that you're blind, but still completely valuable for all kinds of things, your self-esteem will be healthy.

Then you'll understand that you're not better than someone else because you can see or worse because you can't.

Fortunately, I don't have any psychological problem or inferiority complex because of that.

I simply can't see and can't do this or that, and that's it.

How is that Alvino came to be able to wander the streets of this city he loves so much?

He owes it all to one of life's lucky breaks which he had the good sense to build on.

When he was a teenager, in the year 2000, a businesswoman from Alberta visited his orphanag while on a trip to the Bahamas.

Troubled by the difficult conditions these kids were living in, she invited a group of orphan to Canada for a few weeks' stay.

Alvino was among them, and he just loved it here.

- (Alvino): I was in a hostile environment and I'm like, well... ... where people can feel sense of love and enjoy life, and that kind of gave me the idea to think about, well, Canada could be a place where I would want to come to in the future.

And I kind of pursued that dream, so after high school... - (narrator): Alvino's dream came true and he is now a landed immigrant in this country.

After a time spent in Ontario, he chose Montreal as his home port.

He found a safe haven here, as well as some true friends like Carlos Parra, a visuall impaired musician from Colombia, with whom he loves to improvise.

- (Alvino): I'm with my friend Carlitos and we're just taking a day to explore around the city.

- The sound of the city, it's like multicultural, different languages.

Sometimes we can hear the old French music.

It smells like coffee around, sometimes.

I like that.

A lot of freedom in Montrea as a person, as a pedestrian.

Something I never found in Florida, where I was before.

I found it here.

- We're in spring.

I always hear a lot of birds around, especially if I'm walking in areas where there's a lot of vegetation.

People walking around everywhere.

There's people on bikes with their Bluetooth speaker or you can hear people in the park.

Certainly in the Bahamas, there was no access to walking around in the streets.

It's something that I really...

I use the public transport and walk around the city.

Doing that, I learn more about the city.

I learn more about the people that live around me.

I learn more about the world.

- Hey!

We got to the rehearsal studio.

- Oh, great!

Perfect.

- It's here.

It says we have arrived.

(♪♪♪) - Is the song in tune... - What's that?

(inaudible) The first jam we made with Alvino's presence is La cucaracha.

(laughs) - I forgot that one.

Wasn't that with the flute?

- No, in the piano.

- Really?

OK. - So wonderful.

I love it.

I remember that.

- Carlitos has a rich knowledge of different styles of music.

I love discovering styles of music from him.

- We are very connected.

We don't have to look to each other.

Ha!

ha!

ha!

- No!

Carlitos, man, get your melodica and let's play some calypso!

- Which calypso?

- Nature calypso, man.

Let's jam it out.

- Yeah!

- Yeah!

(♪♪♪) (♪♪♪) I like to use music as a way to facilitate bringing people together to find a space to have a sense of belonging, to find joy and meaning through life.

So I use music as a way of animating people.

(♪♪♪) As an immigrant coming to Canada, music kind of opened a door for me to learn not only about various cultures, but also learn about how can I express myself as a visually impaired person and live in a society?

Sometimes we're kind of hidden from the world or kind of seen as invisible from others.

And music is a way for me to find a voice in society, but also to learn about others.

And I perceive the world through music.

(♪♪♪) (singing in Spanish) - (dubbed): I don't have a musical education.

I know a little solfeo and musical language, what I learned in school.

But honestly, I know very little.

(♪♪♪) It was hard at the beginning because I didn't understand the language musicians used.

They'd talk to me about chords, like this is a seventh chord, and I'd be like, what are you saying?

Or the tone, I didn't even know the tonalities.

They'd ask me in what tone I sing and I'd say, I don't know, I just sing.

At first, I didn't even know there were different tones.

I felt a little bad.

As I said to Carolina, I wondered how to explain what I had in my head, how to translate it to their language.

I had no idea.

Now I've learned a lot, of course, just by being surrounded by musicians.

I'm now learning the Tenor Sax.

I've been working on it for a number of years.

But in regards to a musical education, I don't have one the way she does.

(♪♪♪) - (narrator): In addition to performing all over the country, Cristina and Carolina's duo, Alma de Jazz, proudly represented Spain for the 2019 edition of the World Music Part Show, in Russia, a festival that features musicians who are living with disabilities.

- (Cristina): Life teaches you a few things.

As I say, every cloud has a silver lining.

I may have lost my sight almost entirely, but I was able to pursue a passion which I had always had, music.