Melodies move by step in any form of music?

just a general question on melody.

no matter what form of music, jazz, flamenco, cuban, funk, afro-beat,
the melody in these form of music moves by step and not by leaps.
basically the melodies move using similar contours and intervallic
spaces?

this just leads me to another question,
what makes melodies characteristic of certain forms of music, for e.g.
flamenco the melodies usually start with a tonic note, followed by a
b2, b3 imposing that phrygian sound.
e.g. arabic music usually has 3 minor seconds in the scale.

but what about the other forms of music?

would be nice to have a guideline or chart which breaks these
different characteristic grouping of sounds.