Ellison  describes living in nyc as a flood of sound windows open all the time.then he goes on to say that the noises in his four wall around him in his building there was always noise of a neighbor singing and how his rivalry with her renspired his love  and passion for music.

the sentence live with music or die with noises is pretaining to the bustle of noise from nyc .

Ellison  essay and R.Murray Schafers pertain to the noises of the city in the same way as  disturbing noise