Date of Award
Fall 1-2-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Music
First Advisor
Farzad Amoozegar
Second Advisor
Philip Ewell
Academic Program Adviser
Yayoi Uno-Everett
Abstract
This thesis elucidates the sonic contribution of vendedores ambulantes (Latin American street vendors) in the soundscape of New York City’s Times Square–42nd St station. Through interviews conducted between two mango vendors, alongside participant observation, I direct attention to the entanglement between the vendors’ lives and their labor, and how this dynamic sounds within the walls of the subway landscape. The sounding of their labor consists of monotone repetitions of the commodity—“mango, mango, mango”—where semantic meaning elides and sound foregrounds in order to engage with transitory passengers. The borders and permutations of different modes of accumulation condition the multitude of labor localized in the vendors’ activities. The social relations of production weave through this urban landscape and condition both the vendors’ sonic contribution and their positionalities. To care for their children, sell their produce, work for or with other vendors, fend off and flee police enforcement all position the vendors as always working. The sounding of this work goes beyond the aural apprehension of semantic satiation, exhibited in the economic structures that delimit possibilities and produce the catalyst for the sonic contingencies like “mango, mango, mango” to occur. In discussion with my interlocutors, I learned that there is still choice in this work, yet the structural barriers produced through accumulation directly and indirectly orient how vendors practice their trade, why they vend in the subway, and how they contribute to the subway’s soundscape.
Recommended Citation
Dreyer, Gia, "Los Vendedores Ambulantes: Their Lives and Labor Embedded Within the Soundscape of Capital" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/1425
