SHIPROCK, N.M. — They started out from hamlets deep in the Navajo Nation, driving hours on washboard roads. When the Saturday night crowd finally arrived at Redd’s, the parking lot swelled with pickup trucks.

Clad in Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots, they danced under the dim lights to bands playing outlaw country classics by singers such as Waylon Jennings. Between songs, couples murmured sweet nothings to each other in English and Diné Bizaad, the Navajo language enduring in this part of the West.

“I’m not silversmithing or painting but the music I make is still a kind of art,” said Travis Mose, 42, the vocalist for the Wanderers, a Navajo country band whose musicians drove two hours from Halchita, Utah, to perform that recent night in Shiprock. “This music touches our people inside.”

At highway honky-tonks, casino lounges and far-flung dance halls, a form of music that many associate with rural white America is flourishing in the heart of Indian country. Dozens of bands vie for shows on the circuit each week, reflecting how one of the largest tribes in the United States is shattering long-held stereotypes of “cowboys and Indians.”