What makes someone Southern??

What distinguishes you being Southern? What are some key differences that separate Southern culture from other American cultures?

These are all big questions, that require more than a stereotypical and superficial answer. After living in Washington state for 7 years South for 10 years, I truly feel that the answer varies greatly and there isn't a straight recipe on how to be Southern or Northern (which may surprise some people!). Southern-ness varies from person to person and in this new technologically advancing age, the culture is being redefined and people are widening its boundaries daily. For example, Southern music used to be slaves composing and singing religious songs because they looked sought refuge in religion and God when their lives were like crap, to put it bluntly. That's how you get the common song of "i'll fly away." The songs were sungn with a fiddle, violin. Then guitars started to come into the picture, acoustic by the way. The genres of music, blues and jazz started in new orleans in the early 1900s, by blacks. Then rock and roll and gospel had their impact on southern culture with Elvis Presley. And now more modern southern music is being shaped by rap music, again by African-Americans! But listening to a certain style of music doesn't make you Southern or Northern! If I was trying to act Southern, I would immediately switch to a redneck, hillbilly accent. But this doesn't make you one way or the other either! America is a melting pot of cultures and since the South nowadays has the largest influx of people, one's history and ethnic background doesn't make you Southern anymore. So if not's speech, music, food, religion; if these are all relative, then what makes someone Southern?

I guess the answer to this question is very elusive, but I have to conclude that the Southern identity is slowly materializing away. With the globalization of the south an the new influx of ideas and cultures, post-South doesn't really exist anymore. The idea of how the South was persists as how the South is today, but a little deeper dig underneath shows its supericiality.