Musical Pitch is Not "High" or "Low"

In much of the Western world pitches are conceived of as existing in a metaphorical 2-dimensional space along a vertical axis where “high frequency” pitches lie higher and “low frequency” pitches are lower. but this isn’t a universal phenomenon. In some cultures, and even for some children in the Western world, this orientation is reversed. 

In many parts of the world, pitches exist in other metaphorical spaces (e.g. thick/thin; big/small); metaphorical spaces related to mass (e.g. heavy/light); metaphorical kinship relations (e.g. grandmother/daughter), age metaphors (e.g. old voices/young voices); or very culturally specific senses (e.g. crocodile/those who follow crocodile).

This is a non-exhaustive list of many of these pitch metaphors with relevant references to help those who are curious get a sense of the global diversity of pitch metaphors throughout time. As with many of the other resources by the author at Mae Mai, the r/GlobalMusicTheory wiki, and other publicly available online spaces, this is a work in progress and updated versions can be found linked here or via this DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24002442.