Each month, Our State senior editor — and resident soundtrack maker — Mark Kemp, a former music editor of Rolling Stone, curates a one-of-a-kind Spotify playlist featuring North Carolina songs and musicians.

This month, we’re putting the spotlight on the college town of Chapel Hill, for decades a hotbed of creative music. The home of the University of North Carolina reached its zenith among music fans in the 1990s, with the rise of the post-punk band Superchunk and its celebrated independent record label, Merge. But Chapel Hill’s music legacy stretches as far back as the early 20th century when a teenage girl named Elizabeth Cotten began writing songs and creating a unique style of guitar fingerpicking on the front porch of her family’s home in adjacent Carrboro. By the early 1960s, one of those songs, “Freight Train,” had become a folk music classic, and Cotten’s fingerpicking style would influence generations of later folk guitarists.

In the 1920s, Chapel Hill native Floyd Council (who, along with South Carolina blues musician Pink Anderson, gave the British psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd its name) began playing his Piedmont blues style for spare change on the streets of his hometown. Chapel Hill’s status as a destination for music was cemented during the coffeehouse folk scene of the 1960s. That’s when young singer-songwriter James Taylor, who grew up in Chapel Hill, began writing folk songs. On his 1969 debut album, Taylor first recorded one of the most enduring odes to North Carolina, “Carolina in My Mind.”

By the 1970s, the music venue Cat’s Cradle became a hub for new music, with groups like the Chapel Hill-formed string band Red Clay Ramblers and the folk-rock group Arrogance performing there regularly. In the 1980s, when punk and new wave arrived on the scene, slews of North Carolina bands began playing at Cat’s Cradle, including the Chapel Hill-formed Let’s Active, whose singer and songwriter Mitch Easter gained fame when he produced early albums by Georgia’s R.E.M. Inspired by Let’s Active and The dB’s (a group cofounded by Chapel Hill-born Chris Stamey), a wealth of artists emerged in the 1990s, including Superchunk.

Since the ’90s, Chapel Hill and Cat’s Cradle — still going strong more than 50 years later! — has continued to produce and host some of the most adventurous music coming out of our state, from the folk and Appalachian styles of Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange) to the psychedelic and orchestral music of the indie bands Kingsbury Manx, Lost in the Trees, and The Old Ceremony.

Every one of the artists and bands mentioned above are on this playlist, including some of the college town’s biggest hitmakers: Taylor, Loudon Wainwright III, Ben Folds Five, and the Squirrel Nut Zippers. But bear in mind: This playlist represents only a drop in the bucket of what Chapel Hill’s music scene has given not just to North Carolina, but also to the world. Enjoy this eclectic set of music from the home of the Tar Heels.