Perception of musical pitch varies across cultures

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"... Now, a new study led by researchers from MIT and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics has found that unlike residents of the United States, people living in a remote area of the Bolivian rainforest usually do not perceive the similarities between two versions of the same note played at different registers (high or low).

The findings suggest that although there is a natural mathematical relationship between the frequencies of every “C,” no matter what octave it’s played in, the brain only becomes attuned to those similarities after hearing music based on octaves ...

Cross-cultural studies of how music is perceived can shed light on the interplay between biological constraints and cultural influences that shape human perception. [Researcher] has performed several such studies with the participation of Tsimane’ tribe members, who live in relative isolation from Western culture and have had little exposure to Western music.

In a study published in 2016, McDermott and his colleagues found that Westerners and Tsimane’ had different aesthetic reactions to chords, or combinations of notes. ..."

Perception of musical pitch varies across cultures | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology How people interpret musical notes depends on the types of music they have listened to, researchers find.