The International Western Music Association is an organization that encourages and supports the preservation, performance and composition of historic traditional and contemporary music and poetry of The West. Members are from the United States, Australia, Canada, England, Spain and Switzerland.

Western Music is the folk music of the Western life style and vista. Some Western Music originates from roots in English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh ballads, as well as musical influences from the European countries of immigrants who "went west" and some carries jazz and blues origins. While "Cowboy" music is an important part of the history of Western Music, the stories and lifestyles of the larger populations of Western culture are equally important: settlers, farmers, ranchers, horsemen and women, soldiers and the women who accompanied them into the west, miners, opportunists, gamblers, saloon keepers, school teachers, and other town folk who populated the great American West are all subjects of modern day Western Music.