Mr Happy, I'm glad you've got your voice back and acquired a blue's voice as consolation for losing your falsetto voice.

I'm wondering has any research been done on group sound preferences. It seems that Jamaican & Trinidadian singers have the same sound preferences as African Americans for gritty, husky, raspy voices. I don't know enough about those nation's music to know if they also evidence the same preference that African Americans have for falsetto male voices. This can't be said to be a racial preference since some traditional & contemporary music from Africa {such as some Ethiopian music} seems to high pitched to my African American asthestic tastes. I felt the same way about the singing in some of Nigerian Babatunde Olatunji recordings. I love the drums & other instrumental music, but some of the singing was too high pitched. When I say "high pitched" I don't mean falsetto. Since I don't know music, I'm sorry that I don't have the words to describe what I mean. But here's a YouTube video that demonstrates what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmH0To1Sx8Y

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Bee, just for the "record", that quote you credited to me was written by John Edward Philips.

I don't know anything about Appalachian music, but I don't doubt that "few musicologists have ever considered, much less investigated, the question of African elements in white Appalachian folk music".

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Also, since I'm here, let me correct a typo in the title of another article Philip used as a source for his article: "The Black In Jackson's White Spirituals".