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.

Appalachian music, old-time mountain music, bluegrass — those are just a few of the tags that folks have pinned on the guitar-, banjo-, and fiddle-based musical styles that have been played on front porches in western North Carolina for at least the past 200 years. It’s the music played when film directors want to set a mood for a scene taking place amid whiskey stills, dirt-track races, or family reunions. And it’s the music that we hear every year when MerleFest begins another three-day festival of old-time folk and modern acoustic music up in Wilkesboro.

Numerous players have come from the foothills and mountains of North Carolina, from legends like Doc Watson of Deep Gap and Earl Scruggs of Flynt Hill to lesser-known pioneers like banjo player Snuffy Jenkins of Rutherford County and guitarist Etta Baker of Caldwell County. Those musicians have passed the torch along to younger artists like the Carolina Chocolate Drops, which formed in the Piedmont, and the Steep Canyon Rangers of Brevard. Other great players have chosen to relocate to North Carolina, having been inspired by our mountain music: The late guitar whiz Tony Rice moved down from Danville, Virginia, and the Kruger Brothers came all the way over from Switzerland just to be in the presence of masters like Watson and to play and sing amid the cool western North Carolina air. You’ll find all those artists on this month’s playlist, plus many more.

There’s something in that western North Carolina air — or maybe it’s in the water — that feeds the musical muse. And we all can be proud of the mountain music that our state is so well known for.