A daft question perhaps but I'm intrigued by whether we associate sad feelings with certain types of music ( minor keys for example ) as a result of learning as we grow up, or is there actually something in there that the human brain will pick up on despite having never experienced it before .I guess an example would be if a previously isolated tribe were played a sad tune would it illicit those emotions as it does to us westerners?
If you really want to find out, you could go ask the Sentinelese, but surely even isolated tribes have some form of music?
There have been studies on this and they've found that there is no universal correlation between what some cultures believe to be sad or happy music and our reactions to it.
JP
It's not all about minor keys or descending scales. Cum on Feel the Noize should be sad (as Jimmy Lea demonstrates in the vid) but is a happy good time song.
It’s a societal thing, because not all societies play music in the same keys or modes; Asian music follows a different form to that from the middle-east, which is different to European, therefore what seems sad or downbeat in one culture, would sound completely different to another.
Japanese traditional music can seem rather discordant to Europeans, and tends to be higher in pitch, for example.