IT WAS BILLED AS the battle of the country queens. In one corner, the blonde diva Faith Hill, whose new album Cry went to No 1 in America two weeks ago and, in shifting half a million units in eight days, made her the only contemporary artist capable of outselling the repackaged hits of Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones. In the other corner, the raven-haired Shania Twain, who is back after a baby-making sabbatical and a rather unfortunate spot on BBC One’s talent show Fame Academy. She’s about to release Up!, the long-awaited follow-up to 1997’s Come On Over, the biggest-selling album of all time by a female artist.

Neither of them was a winner this year but they both performed at the annual Country Music Association awards at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry on Wednesday night. Twain opened the show by arriving on stage on a motorcycle to sing her new single, I’m Gonna Get You Good. Hill followed with the melodramatic power ballad When the Lights Go Down, due to be released as the next single from Cry.

Pure pop spectacle, neither had anything remotely to do with country music, although the standing ovation given to Hill suggested that she was the victor.

Yet in the event both reigning queens were upstaged by country music’s grand dame, Dolly Parton. She wasn’t even up for an award and ten years ago her career seemed to be washed up. She didn’t have a record deal and couldn’t get played on country radio. So she returned to her bluegrass roots and has enjoyed an artistic renaissance with a series of deeply traditional, self-recorded albums. Her performance brought the house down.

“Thank heavens for Dolly. The rest has become nothing more than a pop show,” said Bucky Baxter, a top country session musician who played in Bob Dylan’s band for eight years and now owns his own Nashville studio, where he’s producing the debut solo album from the former Catatonia singer, Cerys Matthews.

He was articulating a widely held concern among Nashville musicians, although he wasn’t entirely correct. The old-timer Willie Nelson may have won the Vocal Event of the Year Award for Mendocino County Line, his single with Lee Ann Womack, but also nominated and performing were Nickel Creek, a young trio who have reintroduced banjos, mandolins and fiddles into country music, and Alison Krauss and Union Station, bluegrass stars of the six-million-selling O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. But listening to the glossily commercial stylings of Twain and Hill, you could see what he meant.

Yet the battle between the traditionalists and country’s pop modernisers is hardly a new one. One veteran at the after-show party, where the issue was debated long into the night, recalled an infamous occasion in the 1970s when an outraged presenter from the traditionalist school staged a one-man protest and tore up Olivia Newton-John’s nomination when she won Female Vocalist of the Year over the likes of Parton, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette.

Not that controversy is affecting sales. Just over a year ago country music’s commercial appeal appeared to be in decline. The so-called “hat acts” such as Garth Brooks had faltered in the marketplace, and for the first time sales by country performers were lagging behind those of rap and hip-hop artists. Yet September 11 has injected fresh life into country music sales. In the past year, according to SoundScan, the official industry monitor, American record sales fell by 5.5 per cent across the board. Yet over the same period country music sales rose by 10.5 per cent. Revealingly, the only other genre to record a rise in record sales was gospel music.

“Country music was the only format that spoke to people in their hearts about what happened,” says Lon Helton, a CMA director. President George Bush sent the ceremony a message declaring that country music “embraces the values that make our nation strong”.

Alan Jackson, who couldn’t be described as anything but country, has more than satisfied that need. He scooped five country music awards this year, including Single and Song of the Year for his September 11-themed song Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning). His back catalogue is packed with flag-waving hymns to the glories of the American South.

“I’m ready to get back to them drinking songs,” he said after the awards. “I’ve always looked at music more as entertainment. I’ve tried not to be too preachy because for the most part people want music that’s happy.”

In its worst manifestation, this sort of jingoism (Jackson’s It’s Alright to be a Redneck appears on his album When Somebody Loves You, released in 2000) means the likes of Toby Keith, whose truly horrible redneck anthem, Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American), complete with lyrics about “putting a boot in the a**” of anyone who dares to threaten the American way of life, was nominated as both Single and Song of the Year.

Fortunately it won neither. Yet away from the redneck anger of Keith, it is easy enough to see why Osama bin Laden has given country music its biggest boost since the Dixie Chicks, who were named Vocal Group of the Year for the fourth time. Whether it’s the old-time sepia-tinted musical postcards of Parton and O Brother or the airbrushed, germ-free country-pop of Twain and Hill, middle America has found comfort in music that represents a sentimental and non-threatening view of the world and evokes a time when terrorism didn’t exist and you could still leave your back door unlocked without fear.