Ralph Ellison talks about how hearing and listening to music was almost everyday thing in his nyc apartment. Ellison describes himself as constantly under the attack of noise as hes in his apartment. One of his neighbors would play music and it brought him back to when he was a kid and played instruments.  When he moved away he realized how much he missed hearing his neighbors music.  When he says “In those days it was either live with music or die with noise” he is trying to say that music was such a common thing back then that you expected to be listening to music everyday as it became a part of everyday life. Ellisons essay and Damon Krukowski’s Ways Of Hearing have some similarities, one of them is the importance of sound which carries over to the aspect of listening to that sound. In Ellisons case its listening to music and growing up around it for him.

In “Living with Music,” how does Ralph Ellison describe how music affects his living experience in his New York City apartment building?

What does he mean by the first sentence of the piece? (“In those days it was either live with music or die with noise…”)

Can you think of points of comparison between Ellison’s essay and either R. Murray Schafer’s “The Soundscape” or Episode 2 of Damon Krukowski’s Ways of Hearing?

In “Living with Music,” how does Ralph Ellison describe how music affects his living experience in his New York City apartment building?

What does he mean by the first sentence of the piece? (“In those days it was either live with music or die with noise…”)

Can you think of points of comparison between Ellison’s essay and either R. Murray Schafer’s “The Soundscape” or Episode 2 of Damon Krukowski’s Ways of Hearing?