SPEAKER_15: Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at iXcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters iXcel dot com slash invisible. Bombas makes clothing designed for warm weather from soft, breezy layers that you can move in with ease to socks that wick sweat and cushion every step. Socks, underwear and T-shirts are the number one, two and three most requested items in homeless shelters. That's why for every comfy item you purchase, Bombas donates another comfy item to someone in need. Every item is seamless, tagless and effortlessly soft. Bombas are the clothes that you'll want to get dressed and move in every day. I'm telling you, you are excited when you've done the laundry recently and the Bomba socks are at the top of the sock drawer because your feet are about to feel good all day long. Go to B O M B A S dot com slash 99 P I and use code 99 P I for 20% off your first purchase. That's Bombas B O M B A S dot com slash 99 P I code 99 P I. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The Eco City, in case you've never been, is full of distinctive sounds. There's the bell the garbage men ring letting you know when it's time to come down and throw out your trash. On some corners, you can hear organ grinders cranking out tunes for tips. There are, of course, the roving mariachi bands. And there are the public markets where you can hear countless vendors hawking their products.
SPEAKER_15: But there's one specific sound that cuts through the din, a voice that, if you've never heard it before, might stop you in your tracks. What you're hearing is a recording that trucks in Mexico City play on a relentless loop.
SPEAKER_02: Reporter Ted Siefer. The crews inside these trucks are looking to buy old household items and appliances. Basically, they're scrap metal haulers, and the recording is their pitch to prospective sellers. We buy mattresses, bed frames, refrigerators. The list of appliances continues with stoves, washing machines, microwaves, and then crescendos gloriously with this line.
SPEAKER_02: Which basically means, or any old metal thing you're selling. This last bit has become the recording's namesake, Fierro Viejo, literally old iron.
SPEAKER_15: The recording started popping up in neighborhoods surrounding the capital city in the early 2000s, but suddenly the sound caught the attention of the Internet and a growing number of amateur and not-so-amateur DJs and musicians.
SPEAKER_14: One of Mexico's major newspapers referred to Fierro Viejo as the most popular sound in all of Mexico.
SPEAKER_02: Its status as a national icon may have been cemented at the World Cup last year when a Mexican fan blasted it out of a massive speaker he had strapped to his back. So how and why did Fierro Viejo rise from the streets of Mexico City to become this huge sensation?
SPEAKER_02: The answer, it turns out, starts with a nine-year-old girl.
SPEAKER_15: A nine-year-old girl who helped solve a pressing challenge in a city that is busy, loud, and brimming with street vendors. Fierro Viejo is just one voice amid the cacophony of street selling in Mexico City.
SPEAKER_02: More than 50 percent, that's five-zero, of residents work in the informal economy. In a metro area of 22 million, that's a lot of vendors who go out every day selling tamales, pressing fresh juice, collecting old appliances for scrap.
SPEAKER_15: The main driver of this massive part of the economy is necessity. There simply aren't enough jobs in Mexico's formal economy to go around. That makes street vending both a crowded space and a competitive one. You can hear the intensity of that competition playing out at the public markets, or tianguis, as the locals call them.
SPEAKER_15: There's a name for the calls vendors use to grab customers' attention in the middle of all this commotion. They're called pragones, and there's an art to them, one that's been refined over the centuries. These types of items, or these types of pragones that can be denominated, have a history of being taken from the past.
SPEAKER_10: That's Liliana Hamayka Silva. She's an anthropologist at the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.
SPEAKER_02: She says the term pragone has a long history in Mexico and can be traced back to the period of Spanish colonial rule. In those days, pragones referred to the proclamations a designated town crier would make about new laws or notices of execution, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_15: This purpose has, of course, fallen by the wayside, but the tradition of pragones has been carried on by street vendors, who have long been important figures in Mexican culture.
SPEAKER_02: So, I can find the film about all the Mexican cinema, some of them as pragones.
SPEAKER_10: Hamayka told me that street vendors and their pragones were often depicted during the golden age of Mexican cinema.
SPEAKER_02: In a 1951 film, you can hear the famed Mexican comic known as Tintan singing the praises of his freshly baked bread while riding his bike through the city. Pana de roco nel pan, tun tun, el pana de roco nel pan, el pana de roco nel pan, el pana de roco nel pan.
SPEAKER_13: Tempranito bailos a acacalientitos su canasta, pasadir con su climpella por las calles principales y también las udabellas y despuestas los portales y el que no salecerquedas y el pan para comer. Today, you can still hear some bread sellers using that little horn which people associate with the panadero.
SPEAKER_15: El pan! The street vendors you hear in Mexico City do not generally burst into song, but there remains an element of performance in their pragones. Vendors use distinctive intonations, cadences, and often clever turns of phrase to in effect create their own sonic niches.
SPEAKER_02: This is especially important for itinerant vendors, the ones who sell their products in carts, trucks, or on foot. After all, they not only have to contend with the ambient noise of the city, but distracted customers who are busy doing other things. Que hegaro tu reconstitutio por tamales oaxacano.
SPEAKER_11: This recording is played by vendors who ride around selling tamales oaxacenos, tamales in the style of the Oaxaca region.
SPEAKER_02: Many mobile vendors, like the bread sellers, enhance their pragones with sounds like bells.
SPEAKER_15: And sometimes, the sound is so loud and so distinctive that no words are needed, like that of the sweet potato seller.
SPEAKER_02: The cart he pushes, by the way, is an ingenious contraption. A little wood fire steams the potatoes and powers that piercing whistle. Then there's the roving cooking gas seller, who opts for simplicity with his pragones.
SPEAKER_15: El gos!
SPEAKER_02: Before Fierro Viejo the recording caught on, many scrap metal collectors shouted their pragones, just like that gas seller. And some, though not many, still do.
SPEAKER_01: Fierro Viejo tambores, refrigeradores!
SPEAKER_10: Antes era el pragonero que lueba repitiendo. A'wra ya es un casedo, es un disco, se hanido transformando las maneiras, pero el significado y el usono.
SPEAKER_02: Jamaica explained that while things like cassettes and CDs have changed the means by which vendors deliver their pragones, their basic function has not changed. And Fierro Viejo may be the clearest and loudest expression of that trend. While the Fierro Viejo recording fits squarely into Mexico's rich tradition of pragones, it's also a stark departure from it.
SPEAKER_15: And that has everything to do with the voice that delivers it. Se compra!
SPEAKER_02: Golchones! So high pitched it occupies its own sonic register. Each syllable delivered forcefully, yet almost wearily. The incongruity of it is arresting. No se que cosales, cabo se el sonido de la niña, que todos los perros en pisa en aguiar, no?
SPEAKER_10: For her part, Jamaica isn't sure what it is about the voice, but it does make all the dogs in her neighborhood howl.
SPEAKER_02: To get the story behind this iconic recording, I took a drive away from the swankier neighborhoods in central Mexico City to a place called Icatipec,
SPEAKER_02: a sprawling dusty area of blocky buildings on the city's northern outskirts. That's where I met Marco Antonio Toron and his family. Muy calgunas palabras, en la cinégres.
SPEAKER_09: Marco has had many jobs in his nearly 60 years.
SPEAKER_02: Cop, chef at a Japanese restaurant, bed frame seller. But the family business, and his greatest love, is entertainment. E es pa' yacita, yos ou pa' yacito, y es chimbomvita, yos ou chimbomvin.
SPEAKER_03: My daughter is a clown. I'm a clown.
SPEAKER_04: Her stage name is Chimbomvita, mime is Chimbomvin. However, making a living as a clown is not easy.
SPEAKER_03: Pero como todo hay temporadas, donde en los bajo lo de los pa' yacos, las contactaciones en los bajo. Like everything, there's times when the clown business went down. The number of contracts went down.
SPEAKER_04: So talking with a cousin of mine, he says, well, why don't you work with your brother who's already working in scrap metal? After a short time on his brother's scrap metal crew, Marco decided to venture out on his own.
SPEAKER_02: But he didn't have a truck, so he built a push cart. And that's what he would use to load and move heavy appliances. He would push the cart under the hot sun, beckoning sellers by shouting through an improvised cardboard megaphone. Y te imagina das en apie, llegas molido, que vamos puedes. Y de la garganta gritando y huál.
SPEAKER_03: And you can imagine on foot, you arrive exhausted.
SPEAKER_04: And after so much screaming, my throat feels the same. With the sun, the heat, the dust. I had a sore throat, bad feet, super tired. I will take the bus to my house, and there I will sit on the steps because my feet couldn't take it anymore.
SPEAKER_02: One day Marco had an idea. He would make a recording of his pitch, something other vendors sometimes did. That way he wouldn't have to string his vocal cords all day. But Marco being Marco, he wanted to do the recording his own way. And since he felt his own voice was too low and gravelly, he turned to his nine-year-old daughter for help.
SPEAKER_07: Yo soy la bos original del pregón se compraculciones tambores refrigeradores, se estudas lavadores. Mi cróndas, o algo de Fierro Viejo que venda.
SPEAKER_05: So, I'm the original voice of the pregón, se compraculciones tambores refrigeradores, estudas lavadores, mi cróndas, o algo de Fierro Viejo que venda. Meet Marimar Tarón Martínez, aka the voice of Fierro Viejo.
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't exactly a stretch for Marimar, who is now 28 years old, to help out her father. She had already elbowed her way into his clown act.
SPEAKER_07: Yo empece a los ocho años. Yo le dije hace que esta escapar, yo quiero se pajecita, y me ese empanó, toda bieno. I was eight years old when I started. I said to him, you know what, dad? I want to be a clown.
SPEAKER_05: And he was like, nope, not yet. And I was like, yes, please, I want to be. And he will say, you're too small. And I was like, no, please, dad, until I convince him. And he said, okay, fine, but now let me be. Y me dijo vai no ya esta bien, pero ya das habempas, entonces empezo.
SPEAKER_07: Y me haciba conmigo. Entonces la gente ese mueres de barista.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she will come with me and people die laughing.
SPEAKER_04: Because I fall down and she falls down and we're dancing and my pants are falling off and I'm trying to pick them up and we're still dancing and I drop her and she falls on me. People thought it was hilarious. Y no la gente a ta cadis.
SPEAKER_03: However, recording the pragon was no time for funny business.
SPEAKER_02: Marco is a bit of a perfectionist.
SPEAKER_03: Every word was rehearsed. And since she forgets what she had to say,
SPEAKER_04: I would put drawings of a mattress on it, a drawing of a washing machine, so for her it was easier to read.
SPEAKER_15: Marco and Marimar did take after take after take after take, trying to get the sound right. We started working at 12am and we determined how much we wanted to do.
SPEAKER_07: The recording began at 12 o'clock at night and we finished at about 4am.
SPEAKER_05: And that's because we wanted there to be no noise, but you know, there's always a dog that barked or some boyfriend who was looking for his girlfriend at 4am. So it took us several hours and I was very tired.
SPEAKER_05: And you could hear it. All of a sudden I was like, Se compran colchones and my dad would yell at me, Marimar! Se compran colchones tambores! And he was like, no, no, no, you're already falling asleep. And I was like, I'm tired. And he was like, I know, but let's try to make sure that the recording goes well.
SPEAKER_15: This may help explain the somewhat exasperated quality of the voice in Fiero Viejo. As much as Marimar wants your old refrigerator, she also just wants to go to bed.
SPEAKER_02: Eventually the cassette was finished and Marco began playing it on his rounds. Other scrap metal crews heard it and liked it, so Marco sold it to them for a pittance. Five pesos, the equivalent of about a quarter. I believe that good faith always has rewards.
SPEAKER_04: You do one thing for your partner, like giving the cassette four or five pesos, which is what it costs. But you take it, no problem. They are like crops you plant that we'll harvest later.
SPEAKER_02: And so steadily, the sound began to spread across the city through the megaphones and loudspeakers of a growing number of beat-up pickup trucks.
SPEAKER_15: Scrap metal collecting is just one small corner of Mexico's massive informal economy. People have long carved out ways to make money whether or not the government approves of the activities.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, street vending is technically banned on the subway and in parts of the historic center. Yet these settings are prime turf for vendors. So why do the authorities allow so many people to work on the streets? The short answer is they don't really have a choice.
SPEAKER_14: The state doesn't have the capacity to generate the conditions for economic growth and employment. But they have the responsibility to attend socially to these people. That's Carlos Alba Vega, a professor at the College of Mexico who has written books on the informal economy.
SPEAKER_02: Carlos says the Mexican state does not have the capacity to create the conditions for economic growth and jobs. But it does have the responsibility to serve those who work in the informal economy.
SPEAKER_14: The state says in effect to street vendors, well, I can't help you solve many problems.
SPEAKER_02: You don't have social security. If you get sick, you're on your own. But what I can do is cover my eyes so that you do what you need to do and I tolerate.
SPEAKER_14: So tolerance is a form of social redistribution.
SPEAKER_02: So tolerance as a form of social redistribution.
SPEAKER_15: Because there are laws in the books against many aspects of informal commerce, enforcement often comes down to political expediency. This leaves a huge gray area governed by unspoken codes and occasional bribes. There is no regulation. But this regulation is not a formal regulation. It is an informal regulation.
SPEAKER_14: It is a regulation that people who work in these places know and respect. And if they don't respect it, this card will be stolen. Alba told me that there is regulation of the informal economy, but it's an informal regulation.
SPEAKER_02: There are unwritten rules that vendors know and respect. And if they don't respect them, there can be severe consequences, including violence. As parts of Mexico City become more gentrified, there are signs that the tolerance Alba refers to may be wearing thin.
SPEAKER_15: A recently enacted policy requires street food vendors in certain neighborhoods to display standardized signs with a city seal. This did away with a long, rich tradition of colorful hand painted stalls.
SPEAKER_02: The city also recently passed rules concerning noise pollution. While primarily aimed at construction sites and industrial businesses, it also applies to vehicles and trucks blasting Furo Viejo would very likely exceed the 68 decibel limit. None of the scrap metal crews I spoke with said they had received any tickets or funds, but one guy did say that they were more likely to be hassled in certain areas. The authorities are more likely to be in places like this.
SPEAKER_03: But they are more likely to be denied because people are more likely to be in the region. He said they sometimes have problems in wealthier neighborhoods because people are bothered by the noise.
SPEAKER_15: And Furo Viejo does have a way of injecting itself into one's daily life in Mexico City. This is something Mike Fortu was well aware of when he was studying music production about 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_02: He would often hear Furo Viejo coming through the windows.
SPEAKER_18: It's so iconic, so loud. You can't even complain. Like, I live here in an apartment. I hear it three times a day. And like, you can't be mad at it. You know, it's part of the city. One day, Fortu was struck by something in the recording. The rhythm.
SPEAKER_18: The banana. The banana. It has it has a lot of musical elements in it. And just the timbre, the timbre of this little girl. I put this 128 BPM electronic music intro and stuff. And it absolutely matched. Like, I didn't edit it much. And she just crashed the lines and lyrics.
SPEAKER_02: Soon, Furo Viejo, the dance remix, was born.
SPEAKER_15: Fortu may have been one of the first producers to sample Furo Viejo, but he certainly was not the last. You can find tracks on Spotify and YouTube that riff on the Bragon in various ways.
SPEAKER_02: Probably the best produced song featuring Furo Viejo dropped earlier this year. It's a collaboration between three producers and rappers who go by Away Coyote, Fano, and Skeeper.
SPEAKER_02: The video is excellent. The three rappers vamp it up like they're rolling in a tricked out Lambo. But they're actually in an utterly ragged old pickup piled high with old mattresses and junk. Away Coyote told me it's sort of an homage. It's a celebration of doing what you have to do to make a living with a certain degree of style and ingenuity. In this sense, songs that sample Furo Viejo are about more than winking irony. They're about an identity. Here's Mike Fortu again. Yes. Like, if you play that, it's almost like an anthem. You know, you played it, as you said, in the World Cup.
SPEAKER_18: And people are going to turn to find the wolf pack of the Mexicans, you know. We can be scattered around the world. And if you give us something to unite for and something to party, we're going to rock the night there. My interpreter, Jose Luis Viesca, a lifelong Mexico City resident artist and writer, had an interesting perspective on why Furo Viejo has resonated the way it has.
SPEAKER_02: It speaks volumes. I think we're very proud of our creativity and how we always solve things like this thing with three clips and one piece of chewing gum.
SPEAKER_17: But at the same time, I think it's something to be expected from Mexicans. You will have somebody that takes a loudspeaker on their backpack in order to make noise, in order to attract attention, in order to precisely do something maybe surreal.
SPEAKER_15: Surreal might be a good way to describe how it felt for Marimar when Furo Viejo first started to spread across the city. She was self-conscious about her voice, and even she found it a bit intrusive. You're taking a shower, you're in a meeting, you're talking on the phone, you're arguing with your husband, or you're having a romantic moment with your husband and the recording plays.
SPEAKER_05: So you hear the recording a lot all day long. A hell of a lot.
SPEAKER_15: Despite her initial misgivings, Marimar has embraced the fame that comes with Furo Viejo's popularity. She's performed Furo Viejo live, and she's sat for interviews with prominent TV journalists. She's even active on social media, under the names La Voz del Furo Viejo and Nina del Yero. Literally, girl of iron.
SPEAKER_02: And social media has helped Marimar and Furo Viejo gain an international fan base. Versions of the Progon have been posted in other languages on TikTok and Instagram, like this one in French.
SPEAKER_04: The
SPEAKER_15: Marimar has also used her fame to call attention to more serious matters, like Mexico's high rates of violence against women and femicide.
SPEAKER_02: Last year for International Women's Day, trucks rode through the streets of Mexico City, blurring what sounded like Furo Viejo, but with a very different set of messages.
SPEAKER_08: International Women's Day was one of the few times Marimar agreed to lend the tune, and her magnificent pipes, to alternate versions of Furo Viejo.
SPEAKER_02: In this clip, the Progon is played from speakers in the Zócalo, the massive historic plaza in the heart of Mexico City. The words say in part. We invite you to the struggle that demands respect, equality, and justice for us and the new generations.
SPEAKER_08: We are the people. We are the people.
SPEAKER_02: Marco and Marimar hosted me earlier this year in the front yard of their home, a small house with a cement floor that they share with Marimar's three kids. Despite the fame Furo Viejo has brought them, the family still hustles to make ends meet. Marco, for his part, believes they haven't always gotten their due. He considers Furo Viejo an artistic creation, and he says he's registered it and retained a lawyer. The idea is that they can pay for it.
SPEAKER_03: The idea is that those who can pay should pay.
SPEAKER_04: Songs, comedies, movies, short films. If they want to use it, they should pay because they can't afford it. But for the carreteros, the people who buy scrap metal, it's very difficult, very difficult.
SPEAKER_02: Marco doesn't collect scrap metal as much as he used to, but he's still very much involved in the industry. Knowing how challenging the work can be, he started a union for collectors. Members get help repairing their trucks, dealing with the authorities, and unlimited access to the recording of Furo Viejo.
SPEAKER_15: There is at least one constant in the lives of Marco and Marimar since the days he was pushing a cart and hollering out of a cardboard tube. They still perform as clowns, only now Furo Viejo has become central to their act.
SPEAKER_07: When we get to the events, we have a city of Mexico, and they tell us, the water, the gas, the Furo Viejo! They come and call us!
SPEAKER_05: The truth is, it surprises me when we go to events and do that number. You have to tell me a sound from Mexico City. And the children start, the one with the water, the one with the gas, the Furo Viejo. And then they start, Se compran colchones! And it's something really cool. It's something that I love to do. Y es el go padrí, si mó es el go que mi me encanta hacer.
SPEAKER_02: Making a living collecting household castoffs for scrap isn't easy. By crafting what is basically an extremely effective advertisement, the Torones ease the toil not only for themselves, but for legions of collectors in Mexico. But it wasn't just what those scrap metal trucks were collecting. It's what they ended up offering. The unbridled, unbowed shout of a nine-year-old girl that for some reason echoed across Mexico and then the world. More on the sounds of Mexico City after the break.
SPEAKER_15: The International Rescue Committee works in more than 40 countries to serve people whose lives have been upended by conflict and disaster. Over 110 million people are displaced around the world, and the IRC urgently needs your help to meet this unprecedented need. The IRC aims to respond within 72 hours after an emergency strikes, and they stay as long as they are needed. Some of the IRC's most important work is addressing the inequalities facing women and girls, ensuring safety from harm, improving health outcomes, increasing access to education, improving economic well-being, and ensuring women and girls have the power to influence disaster. And the power to influence decisions that affect their lives. Generous people around the world give to the IRC to help families affected by humanitarian crises with emergency supplies. Your generous donation will give the IRC steady, reliable support, allowing them to continue their ongoing humanitarian efforts even as they respond to emergencies. Get involved today by visiting rescue.org slash rebuild. Donate now and help refugee families in need. If you need to design visuals for your brand, you know how important it is to stay on brand. Brands need to use their logos, colors, and fonts in order to stay consistent. It's what makes them stand out. The online design platform Canva makes it easy for everyone to stay on brand. With Canva, you can keep your brand's fonts, logos, colors, and graphics right where you design presentations, websites, videos, and more. Drag and drop your logo into a website design or click to get your social post colors on brand. Create brand templates to give anyone on your team a design head start. You can save time resizing social posts with Canva Magic Resize. If your company decides to rebrand, replace your logo and other brand imagery across all your designs in just a few clicks. If you're a designer, Canva will save you time on the repetitive tasks. And if you don't have a design resource at your fingertips, just design it yourself. With Canva, you don't need to be a designer to design visuals that stand out and stay on brand. Start designing today at Canva.com, the home for every brand. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything. Your products, content you create, and even your time. With member areas, you can unlock a new revenue stream for your business and free up time in your schedule by selling access to gated content like videos, online courses, or newsletters. This summer, why not share your adventures with your followers in a newsletter or maybe make some fun video compilations of all your summer escapades. Now you can create pro-level videos effortlessly in the Squarespace Video Studio app. You can easily display posts from your social profiles on your website or share your new vlogs or videos on social media. Automatically push website content to your favorite channels so your followers can share it too. Plus, use Squarespace's insights to grow your business. Learn where your site visits and sales are coming from and analyze which channels are most effective. Go to squarespace.com slash invisible for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
SPEAKER_15: The only way to make your amazing thoughts go away is to talk them through. Therapy gives you a place to do that so you can get out of your negative thought cycles and find some mental and emotional peace. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Get a break from your thoughts with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash invisible today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P dot com slash invisible. So we are back with Ted Seifer who has more to tell us about some of the street vending calls you heard earlier. Hey, Ted.
SPEAKER_02: Hey, so you may have noticed the recordings of some of those calls, specifically those in the public markets, were really well done.
SPEAKER_15: I did notice that. I mean, many of them were just really clean and crisp. They were fantastic.
SPEAKER_15: Like that one, you can even hear his intake of breath. It's that clean. No, so I can't take credit for that recording, nor for some of the other ones that we heard of the market vendors.
SPEAKER_02: They were made by a French sound engineer and sound artist named Felix Blum. He first came to Mexico City in 2009, and he was staying in the historic center of the city. So it's super quiet during the night. It's really silent, probably one of the most silent places of the city.
SPEAKER_19: But during the day, you have hundreds and hundreds of people, street sellers screaming and announcing what they are selling and people going through. And it was amazing for me to be there and to listen to all those songs. So Felix, sound artist that he is, wanted to record the vendors. So he got to know some of them and started recording their Progonos one on one, away from the noise of the public markets.
SPEAKER_02: And these recordings would become the basis for an exhibition that ran a few years ago called Quoro Informal, which means informal chorus. It was held at a place called the Fonateca, a sound library and cultural center in Mexico City. Basically, when visitors walked in, they'd see all these little wooden boxes. And when people opened them, out came a Progon. And then they could also see its musical score, along with an illustration of the vendor.
SPEAKER_15: Wow, that is so amazing. What a great exhibit. And also just like selfishly, it was so useful for our story to have all these clean, beautiful recordings that he made. Totally. But Felix was not content just to be a documentarian. He decided that he would try his hand at street vending as well.
SPEAKER_02: So he makes a CD called Disco Pirata, which means pirate CD.
SPEAKER_02: That's Felix in the intro to the CD saying it's three hours long with over 100 sounds of the city. Whoa, okay. It's pretty ambitious. Basically, Felix styled the disc after the pirate CDs that you can find being hawked in public markets and subway cars. They made off, say, the top 100 cumbia or reggaeton hits of the current day. As you can imagine, Felix's disc did not just feature jams like Furo Viejo, but deep cuts like the balloon vendor. And the knife sharpener. Felix then boarded subway cars and tried to sell the CD in the style of the locals.
SPEAKER_15: Well, he certainly was committed to the bit. I mean, it's pretty gutsy to, you know, sell your Progonis CD with a French accent, you know, like in a crowded subway car. Like, did he end up selling a bunch of these? Well, from a commercial perspective, it wasn't so successful. He said he only sold a few discs.
SPEAKER_19: So it wasn't so easy to scream. And then I met some people selling discs at this time and they said, well, you should do it like this. You should go on this line, the green line. The green line is better for you because it's like university and they will like this kind of stuff. And they even tried to sell it for me. I gave, well, I can give you a few copies and tried to sell it. So the other vendors were giving them pointers for how to shout and sell some things at the same time. That's really amazing.
SPEAKER_15: It sounds like Felix was really inspired by the sounds of Mexico City. I mean, did you get a sense from him, like what he was really going for in his art when he was archiving these and presenting them?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we chatted about that. One of his goals was definitely documentary, right? He wanted to record the vendor calls because they are such an easily overlooked and ephemeral part of the city's identity. I think the act of recording in general, it's like building a memory of a place is building memory from a moment or from people leaving these territories or probably those sound will disappear at some point. They will change at least.
SPEAKER_19: So I personally experienced what Felix is talking about here, how the sounds of the city change and evolve over time. For example, this is Felix's recording of a tamale vendor.
SPEAKER_02: And here's the Progon by the same guy, mind you, that I heard when I was in the city.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I personally like the current one. The lyrics, so to speak, are more complex. It's got a nice flow.
SPEAKER_02: These are the kind of things that you start to notice when you spend a lot of time, maybe too much time listening to Progonus. Anyway, it was important for Felix to try and capture and preserve these sounds, but he had another goal with his sound projects. And that has to do with the notion of public space. The public space is a space for all, it's a place to be able to be listened to. And this all happens in the public space. And I think that's the important thing of listening to this public space, to listen to what people want to say, to what people are saying, and maybe not enough people are listening to them.
SPEAKER_19: That's so true. And I'm so glad that more people are listening. I'm so happy with this story and that I get to hear these Progonus for myself. So I really appreciate it, Ted. Thank you.
SPEAKER_15: Absolutely. It was my pleasure, Roman. It was a really fun story to work on.
SPEAKER_15: 99% of Mizzou was produced this week by Ted Siefer and edited by Jason De Leon, fact checking by Sona Avakian, voice over work by Johan Rashi Vega and Laura Obate, original music by Swan Rial, sound mix by Martine Gonzalez. Delaney Halt was our senior editor. Kurt Kohlstedt is our digital director. The rest of the team includes Vivian Lang, Chris Berube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Kelly Prime, Lasha Madon, Jacob Maldonado-Medina, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. Special thanks this week to Jose Luis Vieska, Aaron Reese, Jorge Mendoza, Eric Cerna Luna, Felix Blum, and to Marco and Mary Mar, Toronto. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99pi.org. We're on Instagram, Reddit, and TikTok too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99pi at 99pi.org.
SPEAKER_00: The show is brought to you by Boar's Head. Boar's Head has harnessed the power of fire to unlock an intense new flavor, an expertly charred, flame-grilled masterpiece to take your senses to new heights. Because when Boar's Head lights a fire, we ignite an experience worth savoring. New Boar's Head Firesmith flame-grilled chicken breast. Flavor forged in flame. Trapped to ignite your senses. Boar's Head. Compromise elsewhere.
SPEAKER_16: Jake from State Farm here, hanging out with Mel's mow and grow. Mel chose State Farm for small business insurance because his local agent is a small business owner too, so she knew how to help him personalize his policies. And now, he's rolling in the green. Like a... Like a good neighbor? Guys, I'm trying to do the line. Oh, sorry, Jake. It's all good. Like a good neighbor? State Farm is there. Talk to an agent today. When the weather app says rain, the McDonald's app says McDelivery. Order McDelivery in the McDonald's app.
SPEAKER_00: I'm participating in McDonald's. Delivery prices may be higher than at restaurants. Delivery fees may apply.
