Western Music (North America)
Western music originated as a form of American folk music. It was originally composed by and about the people who settled and worked throughout the Western United States and Western Canada. Directly related musically to old English, Scottish, and Irish folk ballads, Western music celebrates the life of the cowboy on the open ranges and prairies of Western North America. The Mexican music of the American Southwest also influenced the development of this genre. Western music shared similar roots with Appalachian folk music ("hillbilly music"), which developed in Appalachia separately from, but parallel to, the Western music genre. The music industry of the mid-20th century lumped the two together under the banner of "country and western music," later amalgamating into modern country music.
Read more about Western Music (North America): Origins, Mainstream Popularity, Decline in Popularity, Rediscovery, List of Western Songs, List of Western Singers
Famous quotes containing the words western and/or music:
“One good reason for the popularity of “reductionism” among the philosophical outposts of the Western Establishment is that it can be, and is, used as a device for trying to take the wind, so to speak, out of the sails of Marxism.... In essence reductionism is a kind of anti-Marxist caricature of Marxist determinism. It is what anti-Marxists pretend that Marxist determinism is.”
—Claud Cockburn (1904–1981)
“Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then if he lose he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)