I Hear Music in the Streets: How New York emerged as a global beacon of culture

French Surrealist Man Ray, whose experiments in photography helped elevate it to the realm of fine art, once revealed: ​“I believe in the relation between photography and music; And that is my inspiration.” 

In a medium where silence and stillness reigns supreme, the photograph forms the perfect companion for music, giving form to immaterial soundscapes through its own expression of rhythm, harmony, melody, and tone. If a single photograph could be a song, or an exhibition be a performance, then editor Guillermo M. Ferrando​’s new book, I Hear Music in the Streets: New York 1969 – 89 (La Fabrica), is like a night at David Mancusco’s legendary members only disco nightclub, The Loft. 

The oversized art book, replete with a padded cover that just fits snuggly in your arms, is a dazzling fantasia of New York’s cinematic underground, with vibrant scenes from an age before soaring rents and landlords razed the city’s cultural landscape. ​“Young people took to the streets and reclaimed public space; artists found affordable places to live and work,” Ferrando says. ​“It was in those same streets and parks that kids in the Bronx organised block parties powered by the electricity from a streetlamp – something unthinkable today. Or where Ismael Miranda sang ​‘Abran Paso’ with the Larry Harlow Orchestra, as featured in Leon Gast’s documentary Our Latin Thing.” 

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Ferrando first came to New York in 2008, and spent the next year cruising the streets on a second hand bike, on a pilgrimage to where fabled nightclubs like Paradise Garage, Mudd Club, and Studio 54 once reigned supreme. Through friends, he met David Mancuso and danced with the Loft family, delving deep into the culture through music, dance, literature, and art – which would find form in 2019 via his Instagram account. As the account began to grow, people reached out to share their stories and memories the photographs had touched, including the very people in the photographs. 

“What started as an emerging love story with the city and its brilliant musical past soon turned into an ocean of references, DJs, parties, and unforgettable stories,” says Ferrando. From these seeds, I Hear Music In the Streets was born. Organised across eight thematic chapters that explore the relationship between people (‘Bronx Boys’, ​‘Black Is Beautiful’, ​‘Our Latin Thing’, and ​‘The Oddballs’) and place (‘The Subways’, ​‘The Beach’, and ​‘Days of Disco’), the book brings together the work of over 50 photographers including Martha Cooper, Jamel Shabazz, Helen Levitt, Joe Conzo, Susan Meiselas, and Joseph Rodriguez.

“Every photographer has a personal style, just as a musician or a DJ brings their own character to their music, their selections, or their mixes,” says Ferrando. ​“There’s a beautiful black-and-white image by Arlene Gottfried showing Marsha P. Johnson with a blonde boy. One day, someone DM’d me saying that he was that boy – that during his childhood he had lived in the same building as Marsha, and that she was a beautiful human being.”

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The unifying spirit of ​‘Love Is the Message’ is pervasive throughout the book, not just in the chapter that bears its name but in the images themselves. Here is the New York of rooftops, boomboxes, dominoes, when everyone was extremely outside with nary a thought of checking their phones. 

I Hear Music in the Streets: New York 1969 – 89 is published by La Fabrica.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

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