Thank you very much for highlighting cultural anthropology for your son’s memorial! This matters profoundly to me because I am a mixed-race graduating senior in Metropolitan New York who has found the artistic expression of culture helpful for both cultural conflicts and disease. Therefore, I have mailed to you a copy of my anthropological 75-page independent research paper which initially started as a 20-page AP US History paper in 11th grade. While page 4 mentions a little bit about me, the epilogue beginning on page 59 contains two fascinating mysteries with the revelation of joy and gratitude which some people experienced with and expressed for an African-American folk violinist whom they eulogized and memorialized with great artistic effect. I have also mailed a brief introduction to my research about the therapeutic effects of music, dance, and visual art because the artistic application of culture can heal certain psychiatric and neurological disorders. If cultural conflicts exist between opposing groups, can cultural anthropology cultivate peace? On one hand, I have found that cultural anthropology can discover adaptation, solutions, resolution, and success when applied optimally. Good use of athletic and artistic culture can provide crucial lessons, therapeutic healing for individuals, bonding, teamwork, and even peace between belligerent groups of people. My historical research of African-American musicians found that Black guitarists, violinists, and opera singers were quite popular in the 1800s during slavery and after the Emancipation Proclamation. Beyond adaptation, some musicians became entrepreneurial and the most financially successful African-Americans, paving the way for Jazz and other genres. That said, both the United Nations and its member states use artists and athletes as goodwill ambassadors. The UN used classical artist musicians while the US used jazz musicians. Amidst the bleak unemployment and racial strife in Pittsburgh, the mind of an African-American teen began to create incredible solutions as he sat at his potter’s wheel. Bill Strickland, the author of Make the Impossible Possible, is now the greatest rejuvenator of racial reconciliation, jobs, education, and the arts in Pittsburgh beyond Andrew Carnegie, the great philanthropist who established great contributions to the city’s cultural perspectives and opportunities. On the other hand, even without cultural conflicts, there are many psychological and social stumbling blocks with the idea of culture and belonging which sows discord and personal stagnation. People in either multicultural or monoethnic countries can be confused about what cultures and subcultures they can or should identify themselves with, associate with, or prefer. Meanwhile, many people think that they should embrace one and reject the others. Flawed egos, social pressures, and even the institutional pressure of a school or government might lead people to cheer, fight, or kill over sports teams, rap, rappers, gang colors, or anything else instead of enjoying the possibilities which the artistic expression of cultures, innovative arts, virtues, and personal life can offer to humanity. A culture itself is not inherently good or right, but many people ardently believe that their heritage or chosen culture has the “authoritative” perspective about life regardless of bias and harm (e.g., machismo). Therefore, I intend to study cultures for their strengths, weakness, contributions, and short-comings through cultural anthropology and to examine how community leaders like Bill Strickland coach the best use of cultural aspects. That said, I will deepen my study of Black musicians with one of my African-American friends at Juilliard Pre-College whose father, Jason Williamson, is a professor at NYU Law School. Furthermore, to explain the neuroscience of the arts and to encourage people to engage therapeutically in the arts, I will improve the research and presentations of Artistica Dynamica, 501(c)(3) non-profit which I co-founded.

Thank you very much for considering my application to your memorial scholarship. I am a graduating senior who is fascinated with music, neuroscience, statistics, and engineering. My father is an Indonesian guy who is fascinated by all kinds of music, and that led him to perform Gypsy violin and Eastern European folk music. I spent my early years growing up outside Bucharest hearing classical music and all sorts of Gypsy, Romanian, and Hungarian folk music. Finally, at the age of 7, I became particularly inspired by a violinist at Juilliard, so I began violin after I turned 8 and was accepted into the Juilliard Pre-College program 4 years ago. You can hear some of my performances at my website: www.clara-chi.com. I later found that I am fascinated by almost all aspects of STEM, and I have long pondered how to merge my deep fascination with music and STEM. I haven’t decided yet which college (McGill, CMU, Yale, or the University of Michigan) to study both music and sound engineering in, but I can share with you a 4-page summary and a 145-page draft of my two independent research books which lead to one of my big sound engineering innovation and invention goals. My first book, summarized by 4 pages with 4 tables, involves biostatistics and neuroscience. It doesn’t include any engineering, but I aim to make devices which will build upon the neuroscience research. This first book is a review of the vast clinical research which shows that music therapy, dance therapy, and art therapy can help stabilize or even cure some neurological and psychiatric problems. Because some of my family members have suffered from strokes and dementia, therefore this research is very important to me. That said, I have co-founded a 501(c)(3) non-profit named Artistica Dynamica with my friend, Marilyn Tao, to conduct more research and to help educate people about the ways which some of the arts can be therapeutic. Before I mention my second book, I must mention two important facts. On one hand, researchers have repeatedly found that live music is more effective therapeutically than recorded music. Thus, my ultimate STEM goals are to improve live music, recordings, and playback of recordings. On the other hand, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that more than 1 billion young people already have some amount of deafness. For many teens, an AirPod seems like a genetic attachment. That said, one of my grandmothers is still somewhat deaf despite her $5,000 hearing aids. As a musician who wants to be therapeutic, I am particularly passionate about innovating and inventing hearing aids, headphones, and speakers which will be safer and far more therapeutic than they are now. For example, beryllium in loudspeaker tweeters are more expensive than gold. If I create a replacement for beryllium tweeters, far more people could benefit. My second book (a 145-page draft featuring 9 completed studies out of the 20 studies which we plan) explores timbre in human voices and music instruments. For perhaps live music or playback can be improved if the timbre is improved. Timbre is the tonal quality which makes human voices sound different from one another and which makes one violin sound different than the other. When anyone sings or plays a single note, we think only one frequency is played. However, because of resonances in an instrument or a person’s vocal apparatus, a multitude of frequencies (notes) are actually played whenever we try to play or sing just one fundamental note. Many of these frequencies which accompany the fundamental note provide the tonal quality or harshness.