As everyone else has said, I've heard it's mostly, if not only the result of social conditioning.
I'd love someone with some background to confirm or deny this, but I think in African drumming music (which I'm sure is incredibly varied), being much more rhythmic than classical Western music, it's the speed of a piece that determines the emotional impact. Fast pieces are happy, slow pieces are sad.
MMGeoff t1_ja01c64 wrote
Reply to ELI5: Why do major and minor keys evoke different emotional responses? by BluePrimulus
As everyone else has said, I've heard it's mostly, if not only the result of social conditioning.
I'd love someone with some background to confirm or deny this, but I think in African drumming music (which I'm sure is incredibly varied), being much more rhythmic than classical Western music, it's the speed of a piece that determines the emotional impact. Fast pieces are happy, slow pieces are sad.