This article is about the genre of popular music from the United States and Canada. For other music genres that are sometimes described as country music, see
Country music (disambiguation)Country music, the first half of
Billboard's country and western music category, is a blend of popular
musical forms originally found in the
Southern United States. It has roots in traditional
folk music,
Celtic music,
blues,
gospel music,
hokum, and
old-time music and evolved rapidly in the 1920s. The term country music began to be used in the 1940s when the earlier term
hillbilly music was deemed to be degrading, and the term was widely embraced in the 1970s, while country and western has declined in use since that time.
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