Native African people who have never even listened to the radio
before can nonetheless pick up on happy, sad, and fearful
emotions in Western music, according to a new report published
online on March 19th in Current Biology. The result shows that
the expression of those three basic emotions in music can be
universally recognized, the researchers said. "These findings
could explain why Western music has been so successful in global
music distribution, even in music cultures that do not as
strongly emphasize the role of emotional expression in their
music," said Thomas Fritz of the Max-Planck-Institute for Human
Cognitive and Brain Sciences. The expression of emotions is a
basic feature of Western music, and the capacity of music to
convey emotional expressions is often regarded as a prerequisite
to its appreciation in Western cultures, the researchers
explained. In other musical traditions, however, music is often
appreciated for other qualities, such as group coordination in
rituals. In the new study, Fritz,