The set of responses we have to musical stimuli are taught to us from our very earliest experiences with the outside world. A person of eighteen who has been raised in this culture has spent thousands of hours watching television and movies, and learning the symbolic system of this culture. After certain types of music are connected with certain types of feelings hundreds of times, the response become automatic. But there is no guarantee that someone from another culture, without those thousands of hours of conditioning, would respond in the same way. Religious music, also, has its powerful associative effect only on those persons who were raised or trained within the tradition of which it is a part.
Some musical associations are even more limited in their application.
There is such a thing as individual associative response to music. Because of memorable events in a love affair that were associated with a particular song or theme, that music will remind the couple of those events, even if the song means something entirely different to most people. The reverse can also be true. Music intended to convey sad feelings may produce happy feelings in someone who associates it strongly with happy events in an important relationship. Such individual examples of the strong associative power of music are actually exceptions to the way music generally works, and there is no way such individual reactions can be predicted or programmed by people who write or record music.