[PaulDavisThe1st]

> no one's trying to compare across different traditions

Except that this is precisely what 18th century European musical theorists did, a practice that continues to the present day in some (not all) music education institutions.

While you can certainly hear jokes made in Africa, India and Asia about various deficencies of European music, what you will not find on those continents is a dominant cultural practice of explaining the inherent superiority of their own musicking.

And yes, it is also true that the culture that engages in this is but a single subset of European musical culture, but it also happens to be the dominant one, embraced by both the educational establishment and the elites across the continent. They may look down on certain Basque folk traditions as well as Gamelan and Carnatic traditions, but looking down is precisely what this European phenomena does whenever other traditions are under discussion.

[eru]

> [...] what you will not find on those continents is a dominant cultural practice of explaining the inherent superiority of their own musicking.

Citation needed. Africa and Asia (including India) are fairly big places, and they also have some peoples with very high opinions of themselves and their cultural legacy. I don't know enough, but my null hypothesis would be that until proven otherwise, I would expect that to extent to music as well (and not just literature or cuisine etc, where I definitely know it's happening.)

[PaulDavisThe1st]

It's not about whether there are individuals who feel that way. It's about whether that opinion/attitude has become baked into institutions that play key gatekeeping roles in those societies. One big difference in those countries is that music tends to be(not exclusively anymore, but historically) learned via apprenticeship, a social structure that reduces the scale and scope of "music school" type institutions.