"Country music" only became a general description of country music in the 1950s, when the scope and nature of the genre was recognizable, the most popular physical appearance of the performers was understood, and the characteristics of the audience were understood (Peeter - poeg, 1997, p. ). Such estimates of music venues reflect, to some extent, the accumulation of production infrastructures, the raw number of active musicians, and the continuous recording of a relatively dense cast; in other cases, such associations are created as part of media campaigns and local marketing strategies, "invented traditions" (Hobsbawm, 1983) that have become central to the tourism industry and the music economy (Atkinson, 1997; Cohen, 1997; Gibson and Connell 200
) . However, music festivals have become by far the most common, from the annual East CoastBlues and Sweden Festival of Byron Bay to the Elvis Revival Festival in Parkes, NSW; From the Port Fairy Folk Festival (Victoria) to many country music festivals in Gympie (Queensland), Mildura (New South Wales), Port Pirie (South Australia) and Tamworth (see Aldskogius, 1993; Derrett et al. , atvaudeville shows, "montbilly" sheet music copies (playing and singing at home were still popular) and in theaters that showed singing cowboy films, such as those starring GeneAutry, against the iconic visual backdrop: desert landscapes. In some cases, the connections between music and place coalesce into a definable "sound", such as the output of the music industry at different times in New Orleans, Seattle, Liverpool, Detroit and San Francisco. From the 1930s to the 1950s, these styles of music—bluegrass, hillbilly music, cowboy songs, and folk—began to be more widely marketed using new technologies—recording studios, electric instruments—and at a time when the production and transmission infrastructure was centralized. gramophone records. 301). suggests that it is seen as country music "defined in opposition to metropolitan norms" (Smith, 199
, p.