Why Western Music Is So Popular

According to a new batch of scientific studies, it would appear that the reason why Western music is able to make itself heard even in the most distant corners of the world is the fact that it can easily convey emotions across cultural barriers, even if no actual lyrics are sung. This may be one of the main motives why other types of traditional music, from parts of Europe, Asia and Africa, have never made it into the “mainstream,” as they are more complex and very difficult to understand.

The researchers have likened these differences to the behavior exhibited by modern youth, who listen to a lot of fast music, be it rock, house, or belonging to other genres, but find themselves bored to death of classical or symphonic ones. Despite the fact that both types convey the same emotions, it's very difficult to find common ground between them, and only a small group can do it.

Behind the new research was Thomas Fritz, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, in Leipzig, Germany, who played some 42 music excerpts from various styles, including jazz, rock, pop and classical, to 21 members of the Mafa ethnic group, one of the over 250 that could be found in the African state of Cameroon. None of the individuals who had been selected for this experiment had heard Western music before, and they were all asked to say what type of emotions each of the instrumental parts conveyed to them.

An array of photos was prepared, each showing a face that expressed either fear, happiness, joy, or fright. Surprisingly enough, all of the participants were able to identify the correct emotions, much more precisely than the scientists anticipated, and too accurately to be just good luck. “We played them some extreme rock-and-roll from The Ventures. Some people told us it sounded like frogs croaking and was terrible, while others said, 'Wow, this is good,'” Fritz said.

“Western music mimics the emotional features of human speech, using the same melodic and rhythmic structures,” Max Planck Institute researcher Stefan Koelsch, who has been one of the members of the study team, explains.