About 10 P.M., local bands play zydeco, blues, gospel and other varieties of down-home music.

Nor have they been welcomed on country-music radio stations, which prefer Nashville's slick, cheerful codification of down-home music.

The band, which is performing its 22d year of down-home music, is the host on a nationally syndicated Public Broadcasting System televison show, "The Country Express."

Though it's an unlikely place to find down-home music and dance, Westchester is home to a country scene that attracts urbane cowboys and cowgirls.

The down-home Depression-era music is elating.

Of course, hard-times songs are a staple of blues and country, and the surge of heartland rock is connected with the latest revivals of down-home American music.

Others sell the kind of ethnic tunes the big stores condescendingly call "World Music" but which they just call down-home music.

In Connecticut, clubs devoted to country have closed, and bars that used to feature down-home music have cut back their country nights.

Both the Allman Brothers Band and Gov't Mule are now part of the jam-band circuit that still prizes the combination of down-home music and freewheeling improvisation.

The 10-member group, named after a neighborhood in San Juan, was dressed entirely in white, and all of its instruments except a piano were hand-held and portable, befitting down-home music.