The pentatonic is a universal musical language. In the anhemitonic pentatonic, any note sounds “right” with the others because there are no dissonant semitones. That is why children intuitively sing pentatonic melodies, and beginners on the piano are given the black keys to play (they form a pentatonic scale).
Pentatonicism underlies the folk music of China, Japan, Mongolia, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as early blues and jazz. The blues pentatonic (with an added “blue note”) is the foundation of guitar and harmonica playing. Debussy, Ravel, and Bartók used the pentatonic heavily in art music to evoke an ethnic color.
