Hillbilly Music Re-imagined: Folk and Country Music in the Midwest

Beginning in the 1960s, country music scholarship focused on the hillbilly image to advance a sectional claim to represent the history of the genre. In fact, the earlier institutionalization of country music, particularly in radio broadcasts, emerged from a wider swath of regional and ethnic folk music. Here the hillbilly is re-imagined to encompass a larger pool of folk musicians whose practices resided beyond the control of the musical establishment of the 1920s.