Cross-cultural Perception of Musical Similarity Within and Between India and Japan

Abstract

Cross-cultural perception of musical similarity is important for understanding musical diversity and universality. In this study we analyzed cross-cultural music similarity ratings on a global song sample from 110 participants (62 previously published from Japan, 48 newly collected from musicians and non-musicians from north and south India). Our pre-registered hypothesis that average Indian and Japanese ratings would be correlated was strongly supported ( r = .80, p < .001). Exploratory analyses showed that ratings from experts in Hindustani music from the north and Carnatic music from the south showed the lowest correlations ( r = .25). These analyses suggest that the correlations we found are likely due more to shared musical exposure than to innate universals of music perception.