There are music festivals across the length and breadth of North Carolina this year — more than you will have either the time or gas money to attend. July alone features four worthy of mention, existing on the widest possible spectrum of musical and geographic diversity. We’ve got fiddles in the highlands, jazz on the beach, classical quartets in the Nantahala National Forest and a regular smorgasbord of sounds in the Piedmont.

The 46th annual Festival for the Eno kicks off in Durham on Friday, July 4. The two-day event features over 60 artists performing on four different stages, including former Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Dom Flemons, local poet and musician Shirlette Ammons and the Empire Strikes Brass.

There will be some novel attractions as well. “Since the festival’s inception, our Grove stage has focused primarily on traditional music through the lens of Americana,” festival director Bryan Iler says. “This year, there is still going be all that bluegrass and country and clogging, but there’s also going be a wider representation of traditional cultural music that I think is a little more representative of the Triangle community. We’re going to feature a full mariachi band, a traditional West African Senegalese pop band and Congolese percussionists. Oh, and Rabbi Solomon [Hoffman] from Chapel Hill has put together a klezmer group.”

And there’s more than just music. Attendees can learn fly-fishing, poster-making or browse handmade arts and crafts from 80 different vendors. “It’s really a salad bar of ways to have a good time and plug into at a deeper level with our community,” says Iler.

July 4 is also opening day for the Ocean City Jazz Festival on Topsail Island. “It’s a three-day event with three artists per night,” says Carla Torrey, who has organized the festival with her husband, Craig, for the past 12 of its 15 years. “We are trying to promote the history of the community and support its legacy.”

The Ocean City Beach Community is a neighborhood 3 miles north of Surf City that stretches from beach to sound. It was founded in the late 1940s as an interracial corporation where African Americans could own beach property in the days of segregation. A 700-foot lighted pier constructed in 1958 — at the time the only pier in the South Atlantic open to people of color — and many of its 100 or so Black-owned homes were destroyed by Hurricane Fran in 1996. Though those structures were not rebuilt, the community remains, and the festival is committed to preserving and expanding on its legacy.

This year’s Ocean City Jazz Festival features artists like Jackiem Joyner, Jazz Funk Soul, Nathan Mitchell, The Double Bass Experience and the John Brown Little Big Band, featuring Camille Thurman. Related events include an exhibition of paintings by artist Rik Freeman called “Black Beaches During Segregation” (on display starting June 28), day parties featuring line dancing instructors, food vendors and a boozy “Uncle Nearest Experience” with executive bourbon steward David Neeley. (Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey honors the memory of Nathan “Nearest” Green, the formerly enslaved man who taught Jack Daniel the art of distilling.)

“We’re truly a jazz festival,” Torrey says. “All the music is going to be jazz, and we do a mix of smooth and straight ahead so that everybody gets to appreciate it as a genre.” Music plus an ocean breeze and sand between your toes? Sounds like a plan.

The 44th annual Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival kicks off July 5 in the southwestern counties of Jackson and Macon, roughly 400 miles from Topsail Island. You don’t have to be in a rush to get there, though; this festival lasts until August 10, featuring four concerts every weekend.

“It is a six-week festival of predominantly classical music,” Executive Director Nancy Gould-Aaron says, “but we do bring in other things to mix it up a little bit. We have jazz versus classical this year. In the past we’ve brought in Mark and Maggie O’Connor, so we’ve had a little bit of bluegrass, too. We probably have three or four quartets a season. Not too many duos, but we have a lot of soloists and put them together. For our gala event, we’ll have enough musicians to make up an orchestra.”

This year’s Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival features the North Carolina debut of Paul Colletti’s Viola Quintet featuring The Viano Quartet, poet laureate Rita Dove, the Whitehead Family Young Pianist Concert with Zitong Wang, the Pacifica Quartet featuring Sharon Isbin on classical guitar; and, a final gala “Cellobration” — a concert with eight cellos led by the Grammy-winning cellist Zuill Bailey.

The two-day 54th annual Old Time Fiddlers Convention, held in Ashe County Park in the state’s northwest corner, begins July 25. It takes place rain or shine, so bring your camping gear and get ready to hear a slew of banjo, fiddle, guitar and mandolin by the likes of Sassafras and the New Ballards Branch Bogtrotters. As usual, there will be open jam sessions galore, as well as competitions for young and old musicians alike, featuring several thousand dollars in prizes. Proceeds from the festival go to support JAM, the Junior Appalachian Musicians program, an organization that instructs third- to fifth-graders in fiddle, banjo and guitar.

This quartet of festivals barely scratches the surface of North Carolina’s musical itch. What an opportunity to explore the state and expand your musical horizons.