The purpose of this study was to investigate possible differences in acoustic characteristics
of phonation between populations of European and African origin. The subjects
were 33 adult males divided in two groups. Group One consisted of 17 men of African
origin, and Group Two included 16 men of European origin. All subjects were without
vocal pathology at the time of the investigation, smokers and non-smokers. Sustained
phonation of the vowel /a/ was acoustically analyzed by the Real-time Frequency Analyzer
(Bruel and Kjær, type 2123). Variables included f0, intensity of f0, intensity of harmonics
1–7, jitter and noise level intensity. One-way variance analysis showed statistically
significant difference between the two groups in intensity of the second harmonic
only. The same analysis has been repeated with non-smokers and showed statistically
significant differences in intensities of the second and the third harmonic leading to assumption
that there may be fine differences in vocal fold vibration between Group One
and Group Two. Factor congruence analysis showed differences between samples in factor
structures. It could be possible that these differences reflect psychoacoustic level
