Tamworth was the most successful in this regard, building on the success of the annual country festival in a way that strengthened the city's image in the music industry and created more permanent markers of place linked to the music style. The term "country" did not come into use until later, when some styles originally associated with rural areas developed. , 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. 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
) . Davidson / Journal of Rural Studies 20 (200
) 387–
0
391
Country music was an arena in which stories about rural life and national identity were constructed not only in America but also in other countries where the genre gained public support . "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. areas However, studies in ethnomusicology and cultural studies have clearly documented the commercial processes through which the various folk styles of Appalachia and the American "Deep South" became known and marketed as "country music", as well as the transmission of "country music" through. 187) and a place where an older social order prevailed. in those places or songs that mythologize specific cities in the lyrics (McLeay, 199
; Kong, 1995; Smith, 1997; Connell and Gibson, 2003). Country music came to Australia mainly through radio broadcasts, music distribution.
