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.”