The Amazing Music Murals of North Carolina

Scott Nurkin is on a one-person mission to celebrate the musical heritage of his home state

I recently shared a photo of a stunning jazz mural on Twitter, and it quickly went viral. This remarkable wall painting features saxophonist John Coltrane, and is located in his home town of Hamlet, North Carolina.

When I tweeted the photo, I had no idea who had painted the mural. But the next day, I tracked down the artist, Scott Nurkin—and learned that he is painting murals of outstanding North Carolina musicians all over the state.

Check out Nurkin’s striking depiction of Thelonious Monk—located in the pianist’s home town of Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

“I grew up in Charlotte, and got a BFA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” Scott tells me. His first attempts at painting North Carolina musicians were on a much smaller scale, and were showcased at Pepper’s Pizza in Chapel Hill. “I was doing a lot of small portraits in oil on wood, but then I started thinking about putting up murals in the musicians’ home towns.”

The artwork here is only half the challenge—Scott needs to find a suitable location, not easy in some towns. In the case of the Coltrane mural, the obvious location was the Hamlet opera house, and not just because of the musical connection. “It was big, and there aren’t a lot of big buildings in Hamlet.”

But even after identifying a suitable building, Nurkin must get support from the owner and the city. “I present the plan to the towns,” he tells me. “Nobody approaches me, at least not yet.”

I suspect that will change soon, at least I hope so. These murals are dramatic and capture your attention, even if you don’t know anything about the musicians. But when people learn that these now legendary artists once walked the same streets, they embrace this public art as a potent source of community pride.

As a result, Nina Simone is still a daily presence in her home town of Tryon, North Carolina; and Roberta Flack continues to watch over the downtown of her birthplace Black Mountain, North Carolina.

And here’s Earl Scruggs back in his home town of Shelby.

And what’s next?

Nurkin is pushing ahead with plans for a Link Wray mural. And he’s also in early discussions that might lead to a mural of drummer Max Roach.

Even for someone like me, who spends a lot of time researching American regional music history, these dramatic renderings of local heroes make me appreciate all the more the remarkable creativity that came out of North Carolina during the 20th century. And I can only imagine the delight these works must inspire in the small cities where they get seen daily.

So much public art today is forgettable, and sometimes downright embarrassing. I’ve encountered situations where the only satisfaction citizens get from their public art comes when they mock its pretentiousness. Everybody treats it as a joke—in some cases the public statue even gets a rude nickname that sticks as its new identity—and who can be surprised by all this?

At my old college, this is officially known as White Memorial Fountain—but everybody calls it “The Claw” (Photo by Oleg Alexandrov, Wikimedia Commons)

In many instances the new community art project feels like something imposed by outsiders driven by some theory hatched thousands of miles away. But Scott Nurkin shows us a promising alternative.

This is art that feels like part of the community—and it is, because these murals celebrate the actual local history. The also serve to educate and inspire emulation. And they’re satisfying to look at—if you doubt it, just consider that my tweet of the John Coltrane mural got three million views and 80,000 likes.

Growing up in a working class neighborhood, I judged the possibilities in my own life on the basis of what others in our home town had achieved. I was fortunate that I had a few success stories to latch onto—and others deserve that same kind of boost. They now have it in more than a dozen cities in North Carolina.

I hope that’s just the start. Other cities and states that pay lip service to their musical culture should take note.