How much of human emotional response to music is learned vs. natural?
like for example, if played a song that has a "sad" melody, do we learn to have the "right" response i.e be sad or do we know that naturally?
theoretically, if you had a human being who grew up never been exposed to music, would they have a sad response to a "sad" melody?
I would love to hear what y'all think, this thought has been bothering me for the past week or so
part of this thought was inspired a while ago by Adam Neely's video about music theory and white supremacy
music theory varies significantly across cultures (Adam uses the example of North Indian music theory)
so to follow on that, it would make sense that if cultures have their own ways of theorizing music, that they would have different emotional responses to various music structures and concepts
so I'm leaning more towards learned/informed emotional response than natural
@packetcat i think there are bits of both.
some technical aspects of music, like volume, or harmony/dissonance, or staccato/legato, or tempo, are pretty mechanical in nature and probably are widely understood across cultures, the same way that yelling or speaking quickly/forcefully is.
but other aspects (and sometimes including those same aspects) are more contextual. for example our idea of “solemn” in the west is inspired by Catholic church music. or playing quietly, which normally would be calm, can instead seem tense/anxious, the same way that a person can speak calmly but still convey that they’re furious.
