I suppose the truth is, Country is a label attached initially to certain styles of American traditional music, and then by extension to some of the music that has developed from it.

And the same can be said of American folk music.

So the roots are the same, which means that there is a lot of music to which either label can be applied.

But what about the music that has developed along the two lines? Clearly there's an enormous amount of undisputable crap put out by the Country Music industry, but it's not as simple as that, because there's a great deal which is far from crap, and not just among the music that has stayed close to its roots.

Some people seem to want to use quality as a way of decding which box to put people in. So Garth Brooks goes in the country box, and Steve Earle in the folk box. But then if you do that does it mean that Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson should be in the folk box too, and taken out of the country box? It doesn't seem the right approach somehow.

Then you get someone like Nanci Griffiths, who gets transferred by the music business from country to folk, seemingly on political grounds rather than for any musical reasons.

It's all very confusing.