Country music (country and western music)  - music genre, that was born in Americas southeast (country), southwest and west (western), combining all kinds of music genres, including blues, gospels, celtic music and folk.
Concept "country music" in Latvia appeared in 1990's, when the iron courtains were lifted up and everything - country, western, and everything that includes, started it's victory procession towards us. On stage in Latvia appeared more and more bans, which named their genre "country", musicians started to use a lot more violins, banjo, and lot more, and in their clothing they started to use a lot more western accesories.
But still, the question "Does Latvian musicians play real country?" is important problem even now. There are lot of discussions about this and lot of opinions about this, but the leading answer is that we can not create country music, because we can't create another nations national anthem. We can't create, we can just play. It's like some band in America can just play some of ours folksongs. Another nations just prove it - they've tried to play and create country, but in the end they involve their own traditions and ways of playing and making. Latvian-made country is more country-hit, than true country. There are bands, who tries to make country in english, but here we have another problem - you have to create not only country genre song, but you have got to write it right - gramatically and in every other way possible. And you have to play it right. I guess we have to believe in main opinion - to create country, you have to be born in USA, or at least you have to live there for a decent while, so you can understand Americans, their way of thinking and country itself.
Latvians are persevering nation, so we can just hope, that instant and all new musicians will give us the joy to hear really qualitative country music.