A friend of mine, who happens to be American and also was a professor at my college likes music like this as it is "ecstatic". In Russia we tend to think that we know American music because there's a lot of music with English words, but in fact we know mostly what is internationally promoted. As for more authentic country, or soul music, it's indeed more foreign for an average listener. Certainly, for a decent musician it's not hard to immitate any music, but it is still hard not to be fake. In the same time, as my friend explains, it seems that now musicians are very open-minded and different cultures can overlap quite well; while an average young listener is more focused on today's popular genres and doesn't really care about "old" music like Blues and if it has anything to do with his roots, etc. Maybe it's up to professionals to keep these genres alive rather than to specific cultures, as today we seem to live in one big uncertain culture; of course, there are some new borders, prejudices, music reflects it as weel, but I won't be discussing it here.