Tracing a Living Musical Story
Eastern North Carolina’s music carries a powerful shared history.
African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina opens a door into a world shaped by sound, memory, and community.
This first-of-its-kind travel guide, published by the North Carolina Arts Council, will take you on a fascinating journey to music venues, events, and museums that illuminate the lives of the musicians and reveal the deep ties between music and community.
The guide follows the lives of musicians whose work grew from church pews, school band rooms, front porches, tobacco warehouses, neighborhood clubs, and family gatherings. Their stories show how creativity thrives when people care for one another and make space for expression. In towns like Kinston, Goldsboro, Wilson, Rocky Mount, Tarboro, and Greenville, music has long been a way to celebrate joy, carry grief, and strengthen community ties.
Meet Thelonious Monk, Billy Taylor, and Maceo Parker, musicians whose names have traveled far beyond the region. This unique guidebook honors a full landscape of talent: gospel choirs that lift spirits every Sunday, jazz players who learned their craft in local schools, funk bands that kept dance floors alive, and storytellers who shaped hip-hop in their own neighborhoods. Each voice adds to a larger story about resilience, imagination, and belonging.
African American Music Trails of Eastern NC grew from conversations with more than ninety musicians, along with the work of folklorists, photographers, and community partners. Their collaboration created a resource that feels both practical and deeply personal. It offers maps and travel routes, but it also offers context, helping readers understand how music and place are woven together. The companion CD and photos of public art installations extend that experience, giving people more ways to connect with the region’s heritage.
What makes this guidebook especially meaningful is its sense of care. It treats eastern North Carolina’s African American musical traditions as living history, still growing and still shaping the future. It acknowledges the challenges musicians faced, including segregation and limited access to mainstream venues, without reducing their stories to hardship. Instead, it highlights the creativity that flourished despite those barriers and the communities that nurtured it.
African American Music Trails of Eastern NC invites readers to slow down, listen closely, and appreciate the depth of culture that has always been present in this part of the state. It encourages travel, but more importantly, it reminds us that music is not only something we listen to. It is something we inherit, something we pass on, and something we build together across generations.
To purchase a copy, go to uncpress.org/9781469610795/african-american-music-trails-of-eastern-north-carolina. Included is a CD with 17 recordings performed by some of the region’s outstanding artists.
