In western music culture, we divide the octave into 12 equidistant portions, and designate 7 of those as the primary notes in a major scale, using the remaining 5 as “accidentals”.

However, in other cultures the octave is divided differently–sometimes 5 intervals, sometimes 7, etc–and are not always equidistant/symmetrical. To the western ear, music made using these scales often sounds discordant, or out of tune, but it is exactly how they’re meant to be.

However these differing interval patterns are often only found in traditional folk music. Perhaps it the world-wide exposure to Western pop music?