In modern times people have said that "music is the universal language," and various people have hypothesized why this may be. However, recent cross-cultural studies find that this is not the case:
- "The results show that the emotive valence of major and minor is strongly associated with exposure to Western-influenced music and culture, although we cannot exclude the possibility of universality." (Smit, *et al.* 2022)
- "The results indicate that consonance preferences can be absent in cultures sufficiently isolated from Western music, and are thus unlikely to reflect innate biases or exposure to harmonic natural sounds. The observed variation in preferences is presumably determined by exposure to musical harmony, suggesting that culture has a dominant role in shaping aesthetic responses to music." (McDermott, *et al.* 2016)
- "The results suggest that the Western listener major-positive minor-negative affective distinction is opposite for Northwest Pakistani listeners, arguably because of the reversed prevalence of these chords in the two music cultures. The aversion to the harsh dissonance of the chromatic cluster is present cross-culturally, but the preference for the consonance of the major triad varies between UK and Northwest Pakistani listeners, depending on cultural familiarity. Our findings imply not only notable cultural variation but also commonalities in chord perception across Western and non-Western listeners." (Lahdelma, et al. 2021)

References:
- Eline Adrianne Smit, Andrew J. Milne, Hannah S. Sarvasy, Roger T. Dean. Emotional responses in Papua New Guinea show negligible evidence for a universal effect of major versus minor music. *PLOS One* (June 29, 2022). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269597
- McDermott, J., Schultz, A., Undurraga, E. *et al.* Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception. *Nature* 535, 547–550 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18635
- Lahdelma, I., Athanasopoulos, G. and Eerola, T. Sweetness is in the ear of the beholder: chord preference across United Kingdom and Pakistani listeners. Ann. *N.Y. Acad. Sci.*, 1502: 72-84 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14655


It seems that emotional responses to collections of sound are more cultural than universal. I hope this has provided you with enough information that you can continue your own research into this topic. Is there anything else I can assisst you with?
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