Interesting reply. But do i need to be Japanese to fully understand the Japanese art collection I have. I have studied the history and details, but what am I perhaps missing?

It sounds a little like nature versus nurture. I am squarely in the nature camp at least when it comes to music. So the answer is yes - and many inside the cultural complex accordingly do not understand it.

I'm reminded of the Native American chief, during a conference, who said "you'll never understand our song to the [now extinct] passenger pigeon." He argued, further, that music heritage of children of his tribe should be taught in the Long House; but appreciated his own children also learning jazz and other musics in the public school.

My question to you would be, what do you mean by "understand?" One can learn to appreciate, value highly, and experience aesthetically in a strongly positive way human sound organization irrespective of one's birthplace. The experience may not be the "same" (just as musical experience between people raised in the same musical environment may not be the "same"). I teach courses in ethnomusicology and psychology of music, yet what the notion to "fully understand" music is not clear to me without much greater qualification. I don't teach the concept, except when representing a historical paradigm within the discipline of ethnomusicology that I believe is no longer defensible.

Our experience of music is some combination of nature and nurture, like most things, and that combination itself can differ from one person to the next. Our biological hardware for acoustic perception interacts with whatever is in our environment and develops categories based on that input.

I, too, don't think art is meant to be understood per se (i.e. "means" something). I use the expression only to mean "make sense of" in terms of the functional social foundations of any artistic praxis: why it has been brought into being and what role it serves in society. But I don't understand what you mean by "experience aesthetically." As you no doubt know, art and music are rarely (if ever) "appreciated" in the autonomous manner of post-Kantian, Western aesthetic theory.

By "appreciate" I mean when, how, and how often art and music are centrally incorporated into one's life. In other words, "used" to enhance living. In this sense, it seems possible to "appreciate" art and music in terms of reasons (sense-making) that would be 'wrong' to a native of the original culture.

An advanced percussion student was accepted as an apprentice to a Master drummer in, I think it was, Ghana. One one occasion of group praxis, the person for whom the drumming was intended (for spirit contact) asked that the foreigner leave because his drumming was not authentic and was distracting.

I doubt that even studied familiarity with mico-tonal musics can ever be authentically received by the ear attuned to Western tonality. Blacking taught that you need to 'know' the music of a culture to 'make sense of' that culture, but I'm wondering if that is possible, how much so, and whether study of a culture, by itself, can inform ('in-form') reception of its art forms.

a very interesting question, but what does 'understanding' mean in aesthetics?

(Aesthetic is the most complex domain in philosophy.)

When do we understand an art form (as natives)?

Who will be the judge of this?

Poetry : signification needs profound knowlegde of language.

How can a language be learned?

By training, and communication.

Same for other art forms.

Important is to love difference.

even more so: someone from outside can discover music and art in an other way, all cultures grew on the base of mixed languages (art/ music).

In embracing changes in art and music during intercultural interactions, the understanding of music and art grows while culture is expanding (or vice versa) , and in doing so - meeting and producing new forms of culture.

From the origin to differentiation and back to the origin.

Understanding is experience is understanding.

Isn't it?

Thera are a lot of Japanese orchestra's and solist playing on the highest level Western classical music.

I believe that some aspects of music are universal and are dictated by our shared neural and physical properties, so would qualify as "trans-cultural and thus somehow universal" in the words of the questioner. For example, Brown and Jordania claim in Universals in the world’s musics (2011) that a type of music with a steady beat exists in all the world's musical traditions. Researchers have studied the way that rhythm and beat is processed in the brain (Levitin, Grahn and London 2018), and this works in the same way for everyone, for every type of music. This is just one example, but it will be similar for melody, harmony, structure, etc. So yes anyone can 'understand' and appreciate music from any culture, to the extent that music from every culture is working within the same neural paradigm.

But, to consider the deep understanding that an "experienced native" has of music from within their own culture; I think you have to be raised in that culture from birth to access this kind of understanding. To a listener from within the same "cultural complex" as the composer or performer of the work, the music has been written and performed with an audience of their experience and cultural outlook in mind. The full significance of every nuance, and every reference, in the music will only be accessible to this kind of listener; and really a "full" understanding is not accessible even to this listener, only to the performer themselves. I believe that while extended participation and observation can help a researcher to approach a more nuanced understanding, no amount of immersion will ever put an outsider on par with an insider. This is why it is so important to acknowledge and include the perspectives of performers and cultural custodians in any musical analysis or research.

I generally agree. However, the brain has "windows" of opportunity for the development of certain aspects of perception. It would seem that pitch, for example, is thus governed. And I would suspect, though can't research, that music in lands that have tonal languages will have this developmental window and that having missed it for being from another culture can certainly influence the quality of perception for those developmental abilities as applies to musical pitch and timbre (overtones).

Music may have certain acoustic properties (pitch, duration, intensity, timbre) that are universal in an uninteresting sense but the idea of it being a "universal language" is one I reject. Not only that, but claims that studied exposure to "world" and "multicultural musics" are conducive to understanding other cultures is I think factually overstated--especially if the exposure is only selected or sampled.

Willy: Good point about Asian orchestras and soloists. But students there begin their studies of Western instruments as early as age 3: e.g., the Suzuki method; Yamaha Schools. Their exposure to Western classical music at this critical window is, I think, central. Japan also has Enka, a popular song style that is fully tonal in the Western sense. Then again, there are no (or no notable) Western ensembles or soloists playing Oriental musics.

Thanks for sparking this conversation! In a quick response re the drummer whose presence dis-allowed 'transcendence' and so prevented a unity, an invisible connection wherein all present become an inseparable part of what is, I find that John Murungi's writing tellingly teases this out:

Murungi, J. (2011). African Musical Aesthetics. Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.