The NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR) is pleased to announce that the Come Hear NC Music Office (CHNCMO) is now a part of the North Carolina Arts Council. This marks a fitting return for Come Hear NC, which began as an NCAC initiative during the 2019 “North Carolina Year of Music.” As a longstanding steward of the mission of arts for all citizens, the NC Arts Council represents a perfect home for CHNCMO. As the Music Office works both to celebrate our state’s rich musical legacy and ensure that legacy’s healthy development, its work matches the NC Arts Council’s commitment to the “intrinsic value of the arts” for the intellectual, emotional, and economic betterment of North Carolinians.
CHNCMO’s support of North Carolina music and musicians furthers the five goals set out by DNCR’s strategic plan for 2025–2029: to educate with creativity and joy, strengthen local economies via culture, preserve and enhance access to cultural resources, bolster cross-DNCR collaboration and responsiveness to public need, and continue Hurricane Helene recovery and climate resilience work.
CHNCMO seeks to spread the joy of North Carolina’s musical past and vibrant present. As a sponsor and collaborator on the PBS-NC music program Shaped by Sound, the music of both legends such as Ben Folds, Anthony Hamilton, and Alice Gerrard and up-and-comers such as Cyanca, Sluice, and Faith & Harmony, the show captures the many genres in which, from old-time to rap, indie rock to gospel, our state continues to innovate. The Music Office helps select artists for the show, writes questions for its interview segments, and promotes the weekly episodes. And with deep-dive essays on our blogs, we explore the background and context of each performance, allowing readers to get the most out of each episode.
More generally, the CHNCMO website, social media account, and monthly playlists serve to delight and instruct about everything musical in North Carolina. The aim of each is to organize the vast array of musical information in and about the state into understandable and enjoyable stories. As such, the Music Office provides vital context, background, and interpretation to increase the citizenry’s interest in and passion for the music. And in a positive feedback loop, we hope that the exciting recordings, live performances, and events that the Music Office amplifies will inspire folks to research the music’s historical roots.
Further, the Music Office’s work serves the conviction that the musical health of our local communities significantly benefits local economies. Music drives tourism to hundreds of spots around our state, stimulates local business via festivals and nightlife, and provides the more intangible but real benefit of giving a community its positive feel—of making it a desirable town or city in which to live, work, and play. The music and musicians of North Carolina are cultural juggernauts, and as such play an outsized role in defining North Carolina’s sense of itself and its meaning for the rest of the world. Every product the Music Office creates, then, functions as an advertisement for North Carolina. Take, for example, the NC Murals Project, a collaboration with the artist Scott Nurkin to celebrate NC music legends in their hometowns, from Nina Simone, in the foothills of Polk County, to Max Roach, on the coast in Pasquotank County. On site, CHNCMO provides plaques with informative text for these murals and is building a robust digital catalog of them, replete with high-quality photos and text providing deep historical context. This project boosts tourism and community pride in locales around the state.
As for DNCR’s mission to preserve cultural resources and increase access, CHNCMO has, so to speak, a good problem: the embarrassment of NC musical riches means the story can feel overwhelming and complicated to the uninitiated. The Music Office’s writing, social media posts, playlists, and resources solve that problem. Together, they serve as a clearinghouse that organizes information and presents useful context, resources, and narrative to tell NC music’s story with clarity and integrity. And to increase access to arts programs, the office maintains several listings of music resources—everything from radio stations and music camps to instrument stores and public performance spaces and rehearsal rooms.
As a collaboration-oriented and public-facing office, CHNCMO coordinates with other agencies within the Arts Council and DNCR more widely. For example, the musical education programs, poetry performances, and the like that frequently crop up in other NCAC domains dovetail seamlessly with the Music Office’s work to celebrate grassroots musical activity in the state. Our yearly celebration of Make Music Day involves local arts councils around the state alongside individual music makers, allowing amateurs and professionals alike to share impromptu musical performances. And when DNCR puts on a public event featuring music, folks in CHNCMO play a central role in booking and staging performances for the event, as with the upcoming July Fourth celebration at the Capitol in Raleigh: Capitol 250: North Carolina Freedom Fest. Additionally, DNCR-wide promotions centering important celebrations such as Women’s History Month and Black History Month allow us to highlight the important role that NC musicians and institutions have played.
Finally, more than a year and a half has passed and western North Carolina (WNC) is still suffering the effects of Hurricane Helene. The Music Office continues to lift up musicians, venues, and art spaces in the region. Because tourism powers a large portion of WNC’s economy, CHNCMO will continue reminding folks of the traditions of old-time, country, jazz, and folk music that began in the mountains and are living and breathing there today.
The Come Hear NC Music Office, then, is poised to do all it can to celebrate North Carolina music. In its new home at the NC Arts Council, CHNCMO will work to tell the stories and provide the resources needed to keep music at the center of the state’s economic, social, and aesthetic life.