Lourdes Pérez is a Boricua contralto vocalist, guitarist, composer, poet, decimista, and oral historian.

In 2006, she was awarded one of the first five United States Artists Music Fellowships, honoring her contribution to music. Pérez has performed internationally and collaborated with other artists for over 30 years and has released 14 recordings, two oral history books/CDs with original songs derived from the stories, and multiple commissioned homenajes (honor songs), scores and soundtracks for dance, theater and film. Often conjuring comparisons to the soulful world music genres of cante jonde, morna and fado, Pérez' body of music has been aptly characterized as contemporary folk opera ("opera of the people") that honors the legacy of her Puerto Rican mountain roots, bears witness to love, longing, and injustice, and paints rich images of the natural world. Through her visibility as a lesbian and her music, she occupied spaces that didn't often overlap, or include people like her, and she quietly opened many paths along the way. A book of over 300 of Pérez’ selected poems and lyrics with English translations is currently under editorial review to be published later this year.