When Yasna Vismale was a little girl, she followed her mother as she cleaned the house and mimicked the vacuum cleaner’s rumbling noises as it whirred across the carpet.
She often stole her mother’s flip phone to make songs by mashing buttons on the keypad and produced touch tones into a voice recorder. Vismale used the recordings to underscore any live sounds that she could make such as whistling, making her a self-proclaimed expert by age 8.
Together, Vismale and her mother watched animated Studio Ghibli films such as “Princess Mononoke,” leaving the sounds of composer Joe Hisaishi’s score stuck in her head until she sang her own melodic remixes later on. That memory always made her mother smile.
Vismale couldn’t settle on an instrument to play until she was 12. She had to pick the perfect one, which hinged on her mother’s only condition: Whatever instrument her daughter chose, she had to commit to being the best she could be.
And Vismale chose trumpet. Not because it was her first choice, but because her cousin had an extra that she could use, and a brand new instrument would cost her family money they couldn’t spare.
“That’s one thing that people never tell you: It’s very expensive to be a musician,” said Vismale, battling to be heard over a crowd of bustling college students leaving classrooms and weaving around us like a hurdle to get to their next stop.
Vismale is unbothered by the resources she lacked growing up in a low-income, immigrant home. At 23, she’s comfortable in her surroundings — exhibited by the sweat suit she wore to our early morning interview at USC, where she’s pursuing a master’s in film scoring at the Thornton School of Music.
Vismale’s response to her achievements as a young music producer, film composer and author are poised. She looks back on her short life with incredulous pride — no thanks to money — but to the confidence her mother instilled in her to follow her dreams wherever they may lead.
Vismale was raised in Seattle by her Japanese mother, Chiemi Yamaoka. When Yamaoka was pregnant with Vismale, she promised two things: to speak to her daughter in Japanese and to hug her every chance she could.
“You’re my treasure. And I’m always there for you,” Yamaoka recalls saying to her daughter whenever they embraced.
When Vismale was 17, Yamaoka drove her to the farmer’s market on Sundays to busk with her trumpet. Never rely on other people’s money, she’d say, and whatever Vismale earned improvising jazz sets and performing covers of famous Disney songs would be hers to spend however she liked.
Over the years, Vismale’s natural talent revealed itself while playing with her middle and high school jazz bands. That experience afforded her opportunities to perform as the opener for Disney’s Humanitarian Award Ceremony and as a guest artist for the Japanese musical group Continued in the Under Ground Jazz Orchestra during her senior year of high school.
But as Vismale got older, she felt burdened with responsibility to enter a career that would allow her to make enough money to support her family, something playing the trumpet never guaranteed. She chose to sideline her musical dreams during a break from school following graduation and instead chased what she called the “immigrant dream,” — a good education at an Ivy League school. The following year, Vismale entered Columbia University in New York to study religion, sustainable development and finance on a full-ride scholarship.
“To me, it didn’t matter what she wanted to do because I knew she would succeed,” Yamaoka said over Zoom, though she secretly wished her daughter would continue playing music in college.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vismale began producing music on her computer to occupy time indoors. Her first opportunity to score a film fell into place when she was asked to compose for a Columbia documentary on nuclear warfare and climate change. She found a love for making music such as the Hisaishi compositions for Studio Ghibli that had lingered in her brain ever since she was a little girl.
Vismale felt inspired to create an independent piece of music that personified the story of her life growing up. “To my love” was more atonal and experimental than the soothing, melodic pieces of brass and synth music that she was accustomed to making. The haunting composition of untuned string instruments, African drums and whispering Japanese voices became Vismale’s most personal and proudest construction — a story of loneliness, but also a testament to her mother’s support.
“How she raised me is why I’m here today,” Vismale said. “Without her, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to apply to USC.”
Vismale submitted “To my love” with her application to the music school.
With no conservatory background or a Bachelor’s degree in music, mother and daughter were cautiously optimistic about Vismale’s acceptance to USC. But the day they learned Vismale was offered a full-ride scholarship left them wondering why they were worried in the first place that spring.
“She always amazes me. Whatever she does, she makes it happen,” said Yamaoka, gleaming with pride, exhibiting the dimpled smile her daughter inherited.
Following her acceptance, Vismale, an ambitious polymath, published her first book, “Werk Your Net.” The book of advice, published by New Degree Press, contains more than 40 interviews with leaders from underrepresented backgrounds. Vismale wrote it to encourage readers who faced hardships growing up to never let their lack of resources stop them from chasing their dreams, and she hopes those following in her footsteps find someone to advocate for their future the way her mother always did.
“Oftentimes you’re told to reach for the stars, but if you don’t know what to reach for — if you don’t know what to imagine — then sometimes that can be very limiting to what you think you’re capable of,” Vismale said. “You are more than capable of doing more than what you are able to imagine, and you have to be ok with that.”