Topics Related to Come Hear NC

Alice Gerrard | Photo by Irene Young.Alice Gerrard is a living legend. A musician, writer, and traditional music advocate, Alice is known for her work with Appalachian singer Hazel Dickens and has appeared on recordings with the likes of Tommy Jarrell and Matokie Slaughter. She performed a song written by her grandson at the 2018 kick-off of the Oxford American's North Carolina Music Issue.

Alexis Raeana | Photo by Sandra Davidson.

In November 2018 the Oxford American launched its North Carolina Music Issue with a series of concerts across the state. In this video, North Carolina Heritage Award Recipient Sister Lena Mae Perry leads a group of musicians from Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill in a rousing rendition of "This Little Light of Mine," at the Fletcher Opera House in Raleigh. Performers include: Sister Lena Mae Perry, Tift Merritt, H.C. McEntire, M.C. Taylor, Chatham County Line, Brian Horton, Phil Cook, Big Ron Hunter, Alice Gerrard and Brevan Hampden.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE!Etta Baker is one of North Carolina’s most famous Piedmont blues guitarists. Born in Caldwell County, she started learning guitar from her father when she was three. Her masterful, emotive pickin’ first appeared in 1956 on the album Instrumental Music from the Southern Appalachians, but it took 35 years before her next recording - and first solo record - One Dime Blues appeared. That album arose from many years of recording sessions produced by Wayne Martin, our host of “Director’s Cut.”

Caroline Shaw masterfully stitches together sound, ideas, and genres.

Happy spring! I hope you’ve been getting out to enjoy the wondrous arts our state offers.

Lenora Zenzalai Helm Hammonds is a singer, songwriter, composer, educator, and activist who has earned international acclaim for six solo recordings and is one of a handful of female, African American big band leaders.

The scene is now iconic; four young Black men, students at the Historically Black North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro sat down at a segregated lunch counter in a local Woolworth’s department store. In the aftermath, their actions – in ways that we wouldn’t fully understand for decades – went “viral”, inspiring a generation of young Americans, Black and White, to challenge the racial status quo of the American South. Among those who were paying attention was a North Carolina native son, raised in Brooklyn, named Max Roach.

Songs We Love is a weekly podcast series partnership between Come Hear NC and WUNC that explores North Carolina music one song at a time. On this episode from February, Yep Roc recording artist Tift Merritt talks with Eric Hodge about Townes Van Zandt's "Greensboro Woman."

Carolina Shaw | Photo by Kait Moreno.In the world of classical music, bricolage is the name of the game.