That kind of situation. Indian music is the same, so is Greek, so is Arab, and so is Persian. By the time pitch entered western music, it was really rather late. By then it had become typical for western music to have pitch too. But before I explain any more about what tone-color is, maybe I should say a little bit more about what pitch is.
Pitch is connected to counting.
Then if you have things with a different quality, saying 1 or 2 doesn't have any meaning, so there is a tendency to make everything equal. What I'm trying to say is that the properties each of these things has are all the same. All sounds are represented by pitch. That's why they can be pure, and also why they can become abstract. That's why things that are written down become old, and that's why they become historical, and when that happens they become a part of a certain era.