Country fans need to support country music by buying albums and concert tickets for traditional artists or the music will just fade away. And that would be really sad. ↗
Country music has changed tremendously, so what now is considered country was not considered country at that time. We were doing stuff that probably could have been called country music today, but would certainly have not have fit in at that time. ↗
I was into all kinds of music as a teen - country music, because my dad was in a band that played country, and whatever my sister and brother were into. ↗
We could say that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow stock-car racing, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt 'possum, go to Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to Scotch are likely to be Southerners. ↗
Country music is just country. It's going to shift around a little bit, doing some different instrumentations, different production styles. But it will always come back to what you heard at the Opry. Nobody wants it to change. ↗