Can someone explain to me *why* we can perceive emotion in music? It's all kind of magical to me how music really is a universal language. (Erm, it is, right?) We can all recognise a happy tune, a tense tune, an aggressive one, and perhaps a contemplative or serene tune.
Why is that?
@JordiGH That's a really interesting question. Music is so much a part of culture that you'd think it would be less universal. You'd think that a happy song coming out of, say, the Chinese tradition wouldn't be obviously happy to someone immersed in German culture. And yet, most of the time, it translates fine.
@ink_slinger Although Chinese opera is kind of hard for me to understand... But I've head other kinds of Chinese music I think I can understand.
@JordiGH @ink_slinger yeah, highly formalized forms can be harder to process cross-culturally
@DialMforMara @JordiGH That makes sense since something like opera is transmitting a lot of cultural and even political information, not just basic human emotion.
@ink_slinger @DialMforMara Yeah, but.. have you *heard* the music? Chinese opera sounds really different!
@JordiGH @DialMforMara I've heard a bit, but I fully admit to not being very familiar with Chinese opera.