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:
“His [the President’s] earnest desire is, that you may perpetuated and preserved as a nation; and this he believes can only be done and secured by your consent to remove to a country beyond the Mississippi.... Where you are, it is not possible you can live contented and happy.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you—like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist—or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)