Reception of country music

Country music reception is the critical and popular reception of country music. Country is an often controversial, much loved and much hated, music genre. Race issues play a large part in country music reception and the music has been praised for diversity and universality.
Audience
Negative and positive criticism of country music has often focused on its supposed audience.
Though "its primary audience is the children and grandchildren of the poor rural Southerners that gave commercial country music its birth (Ellison 1995; Peterson and Kern 1995)", "country music is widely enjoyed by people in all walks of North American society and around the world" .
President George H. W. Bush celebrated country music by declaring October, 1990 "Country Music Month". The proclamation read:
:"Encompassing a wide range of musical genres, from folk songs and religious hymns to rhythm and blues, country music reflects our Nation's cultural diversity as well as the aspirations and ideals that unite us. It springs from the heart of America and speaks eloquently of our history, our faith in God, our devotion to family, and our appreciation for the value of freedom and hard work. With its simple melodies and timeless, universal themes, country music appeals to listeners of all ages and from all walks of life." (quoted in
In fact, "country music is widely disparaged in racialized terms, and assertions of its essential 'badness' are frequently framed in specifically racial terms" such as "white trash"
Discomfort with country music and accusations of racism may stem from listeners discomfort with their own racism, including a projection of that racism onto country musicians and fans:
:"...For many cosmopolitan Americans, especially, country is 'bad' music precisely because it is widely understood to signify an explicit claim to whiteness, not as an unmarked, neutral condition of lacking (or trying to shed) race, but as a marked, foregrounded claim of cultural identity - a bad whiteness...unredeemed by ethnicity, folkloric authenticity, progressive politics, or the noblesse oblige of elite musical culture." <ref name="Fox" />
Authenticity
These contrasting and contradicting views highlight that country may be celebrated or criticized by different listeners for the exact same and directly opposite reasons. This is a complicated phenomena as evidenced by Richard Peterson's question:
:"How is it that country music has retained in its lyrics and in the images of its leading exponents the dualistic, populist, individualist, fatalistic, antiurbane zeitgeist of poor and working-class Southern whites, although most of its fans do not have these characteristics? In a word, how has it maintained its dinstinctive sense of authenticity?" <ref name="Peterson" />

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