Country music is a genre of American popular music that began in the rural regions of the Southern United States in the 1920s and 20th century Canada. It takes its roots from southeastern American folk music, Western cowboy. Blues mode has been used extensively throughout its recorded history. Country music often consists of ballads and dance tunes with generally simple forms and harmonies accompanied by mostly string instruments such as banjoes, electric and acoustic guitars, fiddles, and harmonicas.
The term country music gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to the earlier term hillbilly music; it came to encompass Western music, which evolved parallel to hillbilly music from similar roots, in the mid-20th century. The term country music is used today to describe many styles and subgenres. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, and second most popular in the morning commute in the United States.
Read more about Country Music: Early Origins, First Generation (1920s), Second Generation (1930s–1940s), Third Generation (1950s–1960s), Decline of Western Music and The Cowboy Ballad, Fifth Generation (1990s), Sixth Generation (2000s), Seventh Generation (2010s)
Famous quotes containing the words country and/or music:
“... in the fierce competition of modern society the only class left in the country possessing leisure is that of women supported in easy circumstances by husband or father, and it is to this class we must look for the maintenance of cultivated and refined tastes, for that value and pursuit of knowledge and of art for their own sakes which can alone save society from degenerating into a huge machine for making money, and gratifying the love of sensual luxury.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“It is hard to describe the thrill of creative joy which the artist feels when the conviction seizes her that at last she has caught the very soul of the character she wishes to portray, in the music and action which reveal it.”
—Maria Jeritza (1887–1982)