Country Music
乡村音乐（country music）是一种具有美国民族特色的流行音乐，于20世纪20年代兴起于美国南部，其根源来自英国民谣，是美国白人民族音乐代表。乡村音乐的特点是曲调简单，节奏平稳，带有叙事性，具有较浓的乡土气息，亲切热情而不失流行元素。多为歌谣体、二部曲式或三部曲式。
In its earliest form,country music was a derivation of centuries-old folk tunes that came to America from the british Isles(Seliger et al.1996).At the beginning of the 20th century,"country music"was a version of folk music.With field recordings of the late 1920s,it became categorized as "hillbilly" music,and then after World War Ⅱ ,entrepreneurs renamed it "country and westen," a designation used throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.With the rise of Nashville as the recording center,however,the "western" was dropped,and by the time it became an important radio format,the name "country" was widely accepted.Whatever the name,until the 1960s country music tended to be songs of poor white folk that were passed down generation to generation as the South and then the West were settled.