Listening to music in a language or culture other than your own is like watching a film with subtitles; you either love it or you don't. I am trying to think of analogy for why we might not like different sounds found in music. Is it as simple as: we like what we like or is it more complicated than this? I recently listened to a podcast, Here's The Thing, with Alec Baldwin interviewing Paul Simon. Simon was researching the work of a man named Harry Partch who according to Simon realized that on a traditional music scale there were sounds (notes) that were often not heard or used in composition and that there were a wealth of other sounds to be heard and used. When I heard this I had a Eureka moment because living here in Mexico I often perceive Mexicans singers as singer 'off key'. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Mexican singers where hearing or using a different scale that my ears were unaccustomed to. We understand this when we listen to traditional Chinese ...
mostly gentle, sometimes turbulent