Ever wondered how or why people can say “it's such a sad song” or “happy, up beat”? We naturally assign a happy and motivating meaning to an up beat tempo. You rarely hear gyms and nightclubs playing sad, slow songs (unless you're in a club playing cheesy 80s classics such as Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us or Toto's Africa). It is rare (near impossible) that you'll hear PSY's Gangnam Style playing at a funeral. We also often assign a song to a memory. When listening to music we are often assisted by the lyrical content in establishing and following a story, but even a lyric-less piece can still make us draw certain emotions from it. Certain chords ooze out certain feelings like major chords (stereotypically) give off happy vibes and minor chords the opposite. But not everyone in the whole world reaches the same conclusions as we do in Western (UK, US, Europe) and Latino societies. It's all about personal perceptions and different cultures raise their new generations following their own perceptions and values, so this article is really focussing on the listening habits of these two societies. You could call it music psychology, some do, but others regard it as phenomenology. The difference between the two terms being their definitions. Phenomenology focusses on the experience of the human in a certain context, in this case listening and digesting music. Psychology is all about the actual functioning of the mind/brain.
There are many theories about this floating around but Stephen Davies's (a musical scholar) theory is better put in words for those wanting jargen-free reading. He claims that the listener can determine certain meanings from music because both language and music share structural elements that resemble grammatical features. We 'allow' music to tell us how to feel by assuming notes are words and phrasing can be treated as sentences. It also helps to listen to pieces created by composers/producers from our own societies as they will include codes and conventions that we recognise and understand, as they have been instilled in us through time and enculturation. Whilst others like Heinrich Schenker (a world reknowned scholar known for his influential Schenkerian music analysis) claimed the human listening process should be regarded as music psychology, modern day scholars think opposite. It is understandable why, as Schenker's opinions were those of 19th century knowledge, nowadays we are spoilt by reliable advanced theories such as Davies's. But the definitions between the two terms are quite close, I don't think one works without the other. In that moment the listener hears the music and yes they are 'experiencing' it as they can feel the emotions in the heart, the skin (the hair stands up on their arms or they get goose bumps) and other parts. But the mind does do some labour as it processes what they're hearing, flags up the codes and conventions, and their memory works to piece it all together. As a result, sometimes they can hear a song, be reminded of a certain memory/time/place and start to experience those emotions again. I'm sure everyone has had this experience, perhaps particularly with songs from our youth!
There has been an argument for quite some centuries now regarding musical analysis both in composition and listening, it shall continue. This topic doesn't have a right or wrong answer because when trying to study human experiences, we can speak sterotypically but not wholly for every culture. Everyone is different. But it's all food for though, next time you feel the vibes of a certain song, question yourself why and how.
