Topics Related to Come Hear NC

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.

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

Carolina Shaw | Photo by Kait Moreno.

In the world of classical music, bricolage is the name of the game.

Earl Scruggs and his powerful, groundbreaking banjo style transformed the world of country string band music, helped create bluegrass, and took this style beyond the South into the central strands of American culture.

Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington’s longtime collaborator, was among the most influential figures in American jazz. A versatile composer, arranger, and pianist, Strayhorn joined Ellington’s orchestra at age 22 in 1939 and worked with the bandleader the rest of his life.  

Before there was Bon Iver or Megafaun, Justin Vernon, Phil Cook, Brad Cook, and Joe Westerlund existed as the folk group DeYarmond Edison. Their short-lived, Raleigh N.C. based tenure gained a cult following, and their 2006 split resulted in a creative micro-burst.

The following post draws from the traditional artist directory of our partners at the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area.

From the first radio broadcast of musical notes to the childhood homes of internationally celebrated musicians like John Coltrane, many of North Carolina's music landmarks are noted by historical highway markers. We've complied a list of those highway markers below.