Agreed. It's not that music is somehow special in of itself, but rather I think it's a form we've constructed and implicitly optimized to trigger certain forms

Agreed. It's not that music is somehow special in of itself, but rather I think it's a form we've constructed and implicitly optimized to trigger certain forms of recall. A lot of early chamber music (and music from way back when in antiquity) was based on the idea of reproducing and augmenting voice, which very clearly carries emotional content. It's evolved and mutated since. Put more simply: I think music is a medium humans have optimized over time to effectively trigger emotional and (less so) experiential recall. In the process of doing so we've found that certain systems of harmony, tone, timbre, rhythm, etc are effective in emphasizing recall of certain emotional qualities. I don't think anyone is born thinking the Beatles' Blackbird evokes a particular emotion, but to those who have lived in the world long enough there's a stunning commonality in what it affects in us. Put even more simply: music is the "language" that best approximates common/shared emotional recall (though obviously there are regional and cultural variations).