An almost confounding combination of traditional shamanic and high-tech activity
Snow Raven is a performer from the Republic of Sakha, now living in the US. She has an incredible generosity of spirit, for teaching her culture, for connecting with people and including them in her performance, and for thinking ahead to the future of humanity together regardless of origin. In this time of division, war, and processing generational pain, I wanted to do a profile on her as she embodies an indigenous experience, as well as an immigrant one, she is ever pedagogical in her presentation of her work, and maintains a robust teaching practice, and she is hyperconnected to new media, participating in metaverse projects, crypto projects, and all things that are recently possible.
She also co-created an algorithmic generator of herself with the famed sound engineer of myNoise.net Dr. Ir. S. Pigeon. She literally made her vocal self into a spiritual machine, on the internet. You can find it here: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/zarinaKopyrinaVocalSoundscape.php She says she finds the virtual world to be one of the Three Worlds. As such the creation of algorithmic versions of the self within it is not only consistent with shamanic world-views but par for the course.
She now lives in LA, performs at healing circles and meditation rituals around the West Coast, and frequently performs at Burning Man, where we met. She is a prolific performer and did at least one show, sometimes two or three every day. Although the festival seems like a big party, every artist who goes there works very hard to create that atmosphere of utopia that defines it, and she is one of the big contributors. I particularly love her performances there because she gets the audience to participate in the songs, creating an experience of shared culture even though she is usually the only person from Sakha on site. She has closed a number of performances with the reminder “Remember, we are all indigenous to Earth”. In a time when privatized space extraction has become a reality and climate crisis is all around us, this is an important reminder to work and dance together, to take care of each other, and to share culture and stories as we move over this great planet .
Suor did not receive a formal music education, instead she learned how to sing from her grandmother (and what could be more formal in the world of magic than grandmother knowledge?). After consulting with an Evenki Shaman she decided to pursue her artistic practice under the umbrella of neo-Shamanism. Electronic music, and dance music in particular is the genre of youth. Suor is committed to this genre in its ever changing manifestations as a means of connection with upcoming generations.
In a feature about Suor in Circum-Arctic, a gathering of indigenous artists from across the Arctic Circle, Tamara Kula wrote: “Describing her album as “god-whispers,” she explained that each of the nine gods in the Upper World has a mission: They will tell, through me, about actual problems, globalization problems. Take, for example, the god Djehegei, responsible for cattle. Snow Raven will use this track to raise concern about the care of domestic animals. The future – the realm of Bilge Khaan – is another topic wide open with possibilities. The goddess Ajyyhyt concerns herself with demography, allowing Snow Raven to express the interconnectedness of the planet’s population. Aan Alakhchyn Khotun, the spirit of nature, is the perfect platform for the pressing ecological issues facing the Arctic and indeed the planet, including climate change, the struggle for resources, and environmental dis-balance.”
I interviewed Snow Raven about her practice at NYU’s Music Colloquium 2022:
Suor: Thank you, thank you so much for the invitation. I’m working on my solo project Suor right now which means Snow Raven, that name was given to me by a shaman four years ago, and I was resisting it for four years, for four years, and then when I accepted it I felt my wings spread wide and very dry. Before I was a wet little bird, now I’m ready to fly. It’s a very strong, powerful name–being a raven. Snow Raven “snow” is “Haar” and “Sur” means raven in my culture. Ravens are very mystical birds related to mental death and they often assist shaman in their ceremonies. It is a spiritual animal, a total animal for the shamans.
I was too young to accept it, but I accepted this year when I’m working on on my solo project. Olox the band, what I have with Andreas my drummer, I see now as a record label. We [Olox the band] will be one of the artists for the Olox the record label and Suor, my solo project, will be one of the artists, and it would be indigenous people based. As I told you I would like to record work with tribal/indigenous people. Record their sounds, and their songs, their ceremonies, so and then they can become artists on the label. It would not be an old-style label, but modern, all crypto based and maybe decentralized–who knows. I’m just learning about this new way of building society so it can be used for organizations. You make your business, you start.
Suor: I’m very thrilled be be here and share my experience, my journey, and knowledge of my ancestors. Being a representative of the Sakha people, indigenous people of Arctic Siberia, is very honorable for me. Also it is a lot of responsibility. Through my voice I feel how the ancestors sing and through my body my ancestors dance. So what I’m going to share with you today, in my presentation, I can present it by speaking. If you don’t understand my English please ask right away because I’m not a native English speaker but I will try to explain what I know.
I came to the US four (now 6) years ago and I opened a whole big world for myself. I came here with the music project Olox which means “life” in my native language. Olox is a bridge between our ancestors, wisdom, and new technology.
I have this bridge style of life in me. My spirits were guiding two worlds. We create opposites in everything, which have plus and minus signs or black and white. Being in duality, all those concepts are connected. I chose that path in my spirituality and in my music, and of course spirituality and music are both connected. I’m expressing it through songs, and through the sounds I make.
You probably saw the videos, of how I bring those two different energies together—modern beats with traditional songs and throat singing.
I have created this arctic beat box style which is imitation of reindeer breath, it sounds like…
… it’s like breath work. When I do that, it’s very much an altering, and also when I do bird and animal sounds.
When I was three years old, I used to listen to all the sounds around me in the forest. I was born in a small village by the forest and I used to go there and talk to them, listen to them. Like an owl [example], cuckoo bird [example], seagulls in the north [example], loon [example], and then crane. The crane is a very sacred spirit, it’s very rare to see them. I saw them in the forest near the place where my grandfather was born. They do a really high pitch sound like [Music] and you can hear an overtone in that—two different tones mixed together.
I am mixing all these sounds and mouth harp and shamanic drum—which I have permission to play with— in shamanism, in my culture it’s not allowed to play drum without permission from the shaman. It’s a very sacred instrument, it opens up the portal to the unseen world for the shamans. Using all of these techniques I open up an unseen world for myself and I invite people on the journey. So it’s basically bringing people into that realm through art, through music. I believe that we can open up, channel, so then once it opens, it opens a lot of information, to being downloaded.
It’s very important when music has a message. For example, in my art I usually talk or sing a lot about Earth. How we can provide healing through each other, through the Earth, through taking care of the Earth. Most of my songs are about that and it’s very interesting how everything right now, especially with climate change and with the pandemic, everything is shifting and in a transformative state. We’re going through a transformation and a healing process and everything is impermanent and keeps changing.
With the new technology we have, with crypto, with decentralized finance, with NFTs everything is rising up. For example there’s the old system and there’s a new system and everything is rising up together, so when one system starts to fail, there’s another alternative version that comes out. I see it as a path of transformation, a path of impermanent movement. And I’ve chosen that path for myself and for my music.
Suor: So inside of the with the non-profit project we are working on– it takes a lot of time to launch–but the idea is to create a coin for indigenous people so they can exchange the value of that coin. Imagine if you do some stewardship, you do some taking care of the Earth, like let’s say you received some task after wildfire, you go and you plant some tree and you’re gonna earn — [some of that coin, and then you can trade it for other goods and services, and live your life that way].
Sofy: While we’re waiting for her to pop back in, is anybody curious about why the coins have value/how they work? Basically everyone can keep the code on their own computer so you don’t have to go to a central bank to have them parse the validity of your money. So it’s a way to make a money system outside of a government system. That’s the shorthand answer and then if Suor comes back she can tell us about the project.
Suor: Imagine motivating people to take care of the Earth and earn money from that. The question is how to make it rare right? How to value it, how to make it rare because there is some technology— I’m collaborating with on wildfire containment but they have bigger technology of real-time earth how to bring peer-to-peer data into fire containment, it could be for basically any catastrophe on Earth. Like an animal in extinction— you basically take a picture or video and upload it, so that will be saved in your browser so nobody breaks your privacy but it also will help to have more information from people. The problem today is we wait for special agencies or government to make or spread the news. What happened with the wildfires (in Yakutia) this year, the fire department was slow and wasn’t prepared and evacuation was also slow. This realm was completely weak and not prepared and bringing that technology for the fire element, which is used already in California, bringing it to my people will be very helpful. And then a whole idea came out from that, they said it can be used for ocean pollution, for cleaning and seeing where oil is leaking, people can take a picture of that or video and because information travels really quickly from people and we also have it on an instagram post and it spreads quickly– or whatsapp or telegram so it’s faster than all the companies. That’s why this very interesting technology in my opinion. It can have a future, and it can be first of all very beneficial for indigenous people who are very close to nature and also that gathers people around.
For example we created Simtables where we can project fire and can interact with AI –putting bulldozers etc on it, tracking the fire. So AI predicts where the fire’s gonna go and then sees where they’re going to evacuate people to. It’s a very beneficial project and I think it also has this gathering part. Gathering community so people can learn from it. It’s not only for future, not only nature catastrophe, but also imagine if you want to plant trees, you can make a map of that area through that technology, or you want to plant some mycelium for example to restore the soil, it can be really useful for many beautiful movements. Ecological movements plus motivating people especially young people because they are all into play to earn. You know like pokemon go. Pokemon go is an old-style augmented reality on your phone. It makes people work out– like they hike or they go out and explore environments.
Our coin can be natives taking this kind of interactive game of treating the Earth like that. People will have some tasks, there will be some characters, there will be NFT on that, and it can be beautiful. But it requires a lot of time and energy and I think if native people can be involved in that it’s bringing their wisdom, their knowledge, into that movement as healers and as leaders. That would be also amazing.
If we do too much of the spiritual, we cut off all the young audience. Let’s say young people will not go to live in the forest right now, it’s too radical a change. That’s why we have to do that slowly step by step. [We must] water it and then change can happen in young people’s and in any person’s heart–when they truly experience it. It’s not from reading books right? I mean books are food for the brain, but for me, real transformation happens in the heart. When you truly experience. It’s also a very exciting time, there’s a very good chance for the project like this to be known, to be popular. There’s a lot of beautiful projects out there but they don’t have exposure, we don’t know about them and one thing we need is mass marketing or some viral effect to happen. If we all think about one idea at the same time, at the same moment and all over the world, that’s what that is. The internet has this power to spread it [that’s what algorithms do] and right now we’re witnessing an even better idea of the internet—web3 right? The blockchain– it’s amazing. I believe in the decentralized world, where people, where everything is transparent and your voting becomes valuable, there’s no corruption, and you own your data. Instead of big companies owning what you produce, you own what you produce and you can decide to sell it or not. I believe in that, we create a whole and other world and that’s why there are a lot of startups being born in the metaverse. They’re being born in the beginning of this shift and being in the beginning is really interesting. Very exciting small projects can be well known.
I always say that if we want to knock on the door of young people, we need to use their tools. And most young people are in front of the computer. In the shamanic world we see that as an unseen world that has become seen. You can’t see the web of the internet in the air but somehow our devices catch it and make it seen on the screen. In the shamanic world, all the elders, all the shamans, before all of these devices were invented, they were connecting telepathically, they were actually using their body as a device and catching all of this information and downloading it.
There are a lot of interesting stories about that, one elder told me about radio. We have a radio but we can actually tune our body to many channels and catch a variety of information.
Today, we have a cell phone, and we google right? Asking questions from shamans would
do that. Asking them questions and immediately receiving the answer, [is a way to] see through into the unseen realm.
There are different realms, there are our bodies which are in the physical world and there are cellular realms. Our cells—that world became visible through microscopes and then there is the molecular world. And the atomic world where all the atoms and the neutrons and electrons are. And so it goes to the micro world, endlessly. In the shamanic world, we see that. Going infinitely to the smaller, smaller, and smaller version of technology. This technology is in that realm, like the internet is in a realm we can’t touch, we can’t see it, but it became digital, and it’s [displayed] inside the screen.
The future is going to be even more augmented. All of these augmented realities and virtual realities that are going to be a part of our life. I am bringing music into that world in order to show some information to young people, because young people are already in that world. So, it’s very important. And I feel that this is my mission, I would like to be part of all of these metaverses and NFTs we’re working on, making our music as an NFT together. With 3d virtual realities, creating worlds inside of metaverses.
Imagine that you can go to Arctic Siberia, to my homeland, and visit some ceremonies of shaman and and then you would have that sound in 360. We’re working right now on projects [like that]. I recently met Jerry Missile and we are starting a new project with 360 sound. It’s binaural but it’s more than binaural it’s using some microphone to record the vocalists (or any sound basically) to imitate your ears. How we hear is very unique. You cannot copy it, but they are trying to make that special microphone that can make, a revolution in sound.
Sofy: This is a different project, by Meyer Sound, but it’s the same idea–recording and playing back sound through a networked sound system of many, many speakers and mics. It can create an experience of acoustical feedback of being on the side of a Swiss mountain through recording and playback alone, and then with the touch of a button, give you the acoustics of Carnegie Hall, and so on and so on and so on:
National Sawdust
https://www.stereophile.com/content/immersive-audio-national-sawdust
Suor: You know having surround speakers like in concert venues, in the cinema right, in theaters but more for venues… Instead of stereo, or surround, it’s 360. I already listened to some remakes of great hits like a Doors or Aerosmith— their hits were re-made in 360. It wasn’t recorded in 360 but it was mastered it that way and it is phenomenal. I can imagine if you can record your sound with the 360 from the outset then it can be mind-blowing.
I’m moving into the dimension where in the interim the music can be in something like 360 recording and then imagination becomes alive in virtual reality. They can work together and create experiences for people. There’s going to be a lot of unusual information out there, for example play-to-earn crypto games already launched. Young people are sitting and earning money from gaming and from making NFTs. They’re making little characters and they own those characters and their skills and the skin and all the accessories of their character on [platforms like] Rarity. You know, you make a story for these type of games. [It’s] not only killing like in war video games, instead of creating war you can create beautiful Earth based educational NFT video games. And music is going to be part of that. I would love to be part of this big movement which is gonna probably be an experience in five to ten years from now. Some of the little projects that already launched, you can see them as pilot projects and they’re very interesting.
My plan is to gather world leaders go to the tribes, go to the remote places where the ecological problems are more severe. This year in my homeland the wildfires were really huge. Almost 16 million acres were burned, I feel that the elements are out of balance. The fire element is dominating right now. And after that flooding can happen, because when it rains water doesn’t pool because of the burnt places and it creates flooding. It’s a transformative time.
A time of transformation can be a painful process, and some chaos comes out of balance like an earthquake, then after that everything settles. That’s what I think we’re experiencing now. Going to remote places where those problems are really severe, very sharp, like let’s say in Amazon or in Peru, the lungs of the earth are being destroyed.
Ice is melting in the Arctic Circle, permafrost is melting because of the wildfires and oceans are polluted and there are so many tribes, indigenous people, suffering from those cases. I would like to record their songs, their ceremonies, their traditional songs before some of them actually dissolve like the nomadic people, the reindeer herders in my homeland.
For example, the Dukha only have a thousand people that remain, and they’re going down in demographics. Before some of these nations disappear I would like to record their songs and also, my biggest dream is to bring technology to them. They can learn how to use that technology, modern technology, that’s not about destroying the culture or earth, [and see that] actually technology is good. It’s an invention which you can turn useful or harmful, like a knife. You can kill somebody, or you use it for having food, or carving. It depends on us. It’s really dependent on us and there should be some education on how to use technology.
For example, AI is becoming a part of our life, we’re already using it as Siri in our phone. And AI does a lot of work faster than a person can but we need to understand it and we need to control AI, not have AI controlling us. Not overtaking, it is very important that we can live in a friendly space in the technological space, where what we’re using is healthy. Not destroying Earth, not destroying us.
Bringing technology and teaching indigenous people how to use it, not being lost in it, and not harming the Earth is very important for me. The reason some of the tribes are dissolving is young people are trying to get to the city, and bigger world, so they’re forgetting their cultures and traditions. If somebody came from Western culture and said “we’re already there, we’re already experiencing this disaster which is going on in the world, this transformation, we’ve been there and we came from that world to warn you, and say that actually staying in your land and taking care of the land and being close to nature, that’s what we’re seeking right now, it’s what our souls want to do”. If we bring that information to indigenous people and seek some spirituality there from people who are close to nature, then indigenous people can learn from Western people how not to do things, how to not screw up certain things like the economic system. All of what we are living through today is shaking up, and we don’t want indigenous people to go there and hurt themselves the way we are hurting now. There should be some cultural exchange and exchange of knowledge. I see how beautifully they can sit together and talk to each other and teach each other.
You know indigenous people keep really deep wisdom through music. But any person can sing, and I mean any person can sing. In my online classes, I encourage people, and teach people how to bring the mother’s voice out. Through the singing technique of Sakha people. This Sakha technique works with the solar plexus. It’s even lower than the diaphragm so sound can travel through the dimensions. We believe, in the Shamanic world, we can go through many realms.
Sound can go straight to the heart, that’s why we’re very sensitive to music and singing. That’s why when we hear something our first reaction before it reaches the mind, comes from our heart. [For example] either we like that song or not, and we don’t know why. And then we start to process—“oh because lyrics”, or “oh because sound, because I don’t like this bass or I don’t like this rhythm or because it’s very melodic and the harmony resonates with my mood right now.”
So it’s interesting how sound is like direct access, it opens up the heart like a portal and dwells there and if sound has a really important message in it, we can see it. We can see beautiful messages inside the hearts of people through sound and sound creates songs. That’s why it’s very important for me to sing in a way that’s accessible for young people, because young people are our future. They’re gonna take care of Earth—I mean, they take care of each other through taking care of home. Earth is our home, it’s our temple and it’s gonna be okay without us. Earth survived many times in many civilizations but we are here and we’re not gonna leave Earth, which means we cannot trash our home.
In our homes when we wake up, we like to wake up, in a very clean and nice home with fresh air, a room with sunlight, we don’t want to judge our house. That’s why we call her “Mother Earth, and Mother Earth means giving earth. She constantly gives us and we need to create this reciprocity and stewardship towards her and learn from her. Everything actually keeps a lot of technology, a lot of wisdom, and if we look at her in a very deep way and learn from her we can benefit in our life.
So that’s why I am positive, I believe that we can dream about a beautiful future. Not like we see in a lot of sci-fi movies. Most of them are about aliens attacking us and apocalypses, and we’re gonna be destroyed or we’re gonna leave Earth and go to Mars and live there because Earth is not good for living anymore. There’s a lot of scary, depressive, action movies. But why can’t we dream, why can’t we make a sci-fi movie in our head? It comes from the imagination right? So why can’t we imagine a beautiful future? Like bringing nature into cities and growing our food in the city, in the house? Imagine— there are so many technologies like vertical agricultural houses or home gardens that AI can control, imagine. So I believe in that collaboration and seeing science as a positive thing.
There’s just one thing science needs–and it’s bringing spirituality, bringing soul, into it. Music is going to be an important ambassador of that spirituality enhancing technology. That’s how I see the connection of technology, science, and spirituality working together.
Part 2 on Snow Raven’s teaching practice can be accessed here:
About Suor:
SNOW RAVEN – SUOR (@snowravenofficial) was born in a small village in Sakha (arctic Siberia) and was three years old when she started to learn the language of the birds and animals. Her voice takes its breath from traditional Sakha culture and is truly an instrument. She is the OG of “Arctic Beatbox” – the reindeer breath and is the creator of “Neoshamanic Healing” ceremonies.
https://www.youtube.com/c/OLOXofficial/videos
About the interviewer:
Sofy Yuditskaya (@_the_s0urce_) is a site-specific media artist and educator working with sound, video, interactivity, projections, code, paper, and salvaged material. Her work focuses on techno-occult rituals, street performance, and participatory art. Sofy’s performances enact and reframe hegemonies, she works with materials that exemplify our deep entanglement with petro-culture and technology’s affect on consciousness. She has worked on projects at Eyebeam, 3LD, the Netherlands Institute voor Media Kunst, Steim, ARS Electronica, Games for Learning Institute, The Guggenheim (NYC), The National Mall and has taught at GAFFTA, MoMA, NYU, Srishti, and the Rubin Museum. She is a PhD Candidate in Audio-Visual Composition at NYU GSAS currently on her Fulbright year at TheISRO in Bangalore.
