Part two of a two part interview series with Suor aka Snow Raven.
While the previous article focused on Snow Raven’s performance practice and philosophy this article focuses on her teaching. You can read part one here:
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.
The text below is lightly edited for clarity.
Constantine: You mentioned that in terms of playing the drum for shamans you have to have permission. I’m wondering, in this kind of cultural exchange that you were talking about is there some sort of permission? You know who is able to learn from or perform these type of musics and sounds that you were describing? Is there some sort of sovereignty with your people because you were talking about this cultural exchange and it made me wonder about your thoughts on permission, how far can the exchange go?
Suor: The shamanic drum of the music style I am in, requires permission. It’s a very specific drum, not like an acoustic drum that we’re used to seeing, or the hand drum. This Sakha drum is used only for ceremonies, that’s why I need permission to play it — we believe the sound of this drum opens up a portal. So we don’t play this drum without necessity for the ceremony or for visiting another realm.
Often drums were used for going to war, for many indigenous people, because that time was very survival oriented. All the time they were migrating from land to land, there were a lot of attacks and war was part of their life. That is how they survived. In my culture we don’t have war drums, only the drum which shamans use. There’s the prabhuk, and also the tabook. The tabook is like a gong, but it has a lot of skin, cow, horse, or reindeer. It is tight, like a gong; you just hit it once. It was used for ceremonies, that’s why specifically Sakha drums, shamanic drums, require permission from the shaman which I have received around 10 years ago from Twelve Sky shaman from Ienisseï–he told me that I can play and sing at the same time. That’s very important, that we have this consciousness, consciousness to honor those traditions, consciousness to to honor the the history of the birth of that drum.
But singing alone for example; toyuk doesn’t require permission because it comes from people’s heart. Singing relates to the landscape, to the environment, where I was born the melodies, they copy the landscape, it goes up and down, up and down, in the hilly places and then when it’s open like in the tundra it’s more monotonic, and it’s self-expression. All the lyrics are improvised, then it becomes a real toyuk but traditionally people can listen to melody of the toyuk and they can recognize where that person comes from; East, or North, or West, or South. Toyuk is a singing identification, and it’s a special singing technique, it’s a traditional song with the melody, traditional melody with improvised lyrics. But using traditional singing techniques is cool. Usually when I play drum I sing in a style of toyuk and it comes from my heart. I do believe and I actually teach people how to open up their hearts how to be able to improvise how sing their own toyuk. You know and it’s a lot of working with fear, some students who are beginners, they’re usually afraid to go to the higher tones and sing from the higher world.
There’s this whole concept I’ve created for the lessons, the vocal lessons. Divided into lower, middle, and higher world. So then the drum actually helps to lie in those three worlds, to visit them and sing from each world your expression through the toyuk. That’s why singing and playing drum at the same time requires some permission. But, playing mouth harp doesn’t, and singing alone doesn’t require permission.
Sofy: Suor has an incredible amount of resources for learning animal mimicry available online for free, but if you want to book a class reach out as per the link below.
Or get started with the educational videos she has put out on this playlist here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm03DEIAoq8&list=PLaUeoyBjCVOKIZ_ddIC0mXaVq-DrnU4
And see a presentation here: https://bit.ly/8SnowRaven8
Mike: Thanks so much, this is really beautiful to hear about. I especially loved your your point about science fiction always being dystopian rather than communicating positive visions of the future. I was wondering — and this is an open question — whether you think there’s anything about music and sound that can communicate that vision perhaps better than other art forms without necessarily telling a a story, but just the way that either music works, or the way that you make music and sounds that can communicate that kind of idea. In terms of people who make art of all different kinds can sort of communicate this dream of a positive vision of the future, I was wondering about the way that you make music on your own or with other people is—are these ways of interacting with other people and with sound– can they provide a positive model for how, perhaps more broadly, the world can function?
Suor: Yeah it’s a very beautiful question. I’ve been thinking all of this pandemic how I can
bring more impact to people because they don’t understand the Sakha language. Especially young people, they’re very impatient and they’re more action and more in the happening stage so I was thinking how to combine singing and then the idea came to me of interaction with visual effects as a background and telling a story through the visual effects. We as human beings understand quickly through the eyes, it’s a first impression, so then young people they are very based on first impressions. Then the second step is going deeper, so it’s you know, seeing, hearing, and then it’s feeling, and for some people even without understanding of Sakha language they can feel what I’m singing about. But some people need more explanation and I think the idea of inserting technology as a tool to seed more beautiful messages about the future is very important. And I think a lot of beautiful not well-known artists can grow through those technologies actually using those tools that model and it’s kind of like a bummer that there are a lot of big celebrities like Billy Eillish, or like any big stars, but like Billy Eillish for an example is well known for pop right? Young people are crazy about her, she has such a huge following. Imagine her doing some campaign about Earth, about healing, she can impact so many young people, she has this huge army. Each musician, each celebrity, they have their own audience they can impact to any, like all the generations. I can feel that this pandemic also changed a lot of people, so and then a lot of people slowed down and started to think about how we can can be helpful, how can be useful so I hope that this movement will thrive and blossom and and be big.
Sofy: What is spirituality to you when you live and when you perform and is there a difference?
Suor: Spirituality for me is all the time, when I eat, when I go walk, when I go to sleep, and when I go on stage to perform. Spirituality for me it’s when you are conscious about the whole web of life. That everything is interconnected and that every single step you make, action, the words you say, or the thoughts you think, can impact to the whole world. That’s why for me being spiritual means being conscious about that and not harming the environment, not harming the heart of people, and not harming my heart. First of all, our own heart. So being gentle and kind and being close to the force of nature. Learning from nature, that’s spirituality.
Sofy: Thank you. I think when you were talking about the young generation and how they may understand their own spiritual journey, it may need to be slow, but I wonder—do you believe that we have to go into nature and the forest to train or what is the path that you envision for the younger generation based on their short attention? And you know everybody is impatient these days.
Suor: Yeah absolutely nature is the teacher. That’s how I learned not only birds and animal sounds but also my whole spiritual path. It’s completely related to nature. Nature also shows me a lot of cosmic power–it’s recursive. Through seeing the forces in nature I can understand cosmic forces. So for young people it could be like some little ceremonies. I would like to bring for example, the ceremonies of life, make it adopted for young people for their short attention and make it really fun but at the same time they can learn a lot of things, like small things, even bringing some offerings to the spirits in nature and putting some food, some organic food not some chemical thing, putting that under the tree and respecting it. Putting that in acknowledgement that this tree is a life and it has a soul. Humbly respecting the environment can be very, very good for the spiritual path of young people. There are a lot of ceremonies we do every day like when we wake up first thing we go to the toilet and brush our teeth and drink water and all of this has a pattern, and for me those patterns, what we do daily, it’s a ceremony. This is because in ceremony there are certain rules, which is good for our survival, so we do all of these things because we want to survive and we choose naturally effortless, more efficient ways. That’s what we do. Bringing that model into more nature based ceremonies and actually explaining that “okay you brush your teeth while you do this, like brushing your teeth is the same action you do like some physical action you do but with different intention, and with more understanding that everything is connected. So why are you gonna do that? Of course you can do that I think it could be really helpful and it might be also popular among the young people.
If you make these fundamental ceremonies more fun and interactive that’s one of the methods of models I’m envisioning for young people.
Sofy: That’s very inspiring. So basically, you’re saying they keep doing what they do but through what they do they could see kind of a different dimension of spirituality.
Suor: We’re not trying to ask them to do something very difficult or that they don’t understand. Young people do difficult things. It’s very hard for them. I remember myself, being 18 years old, it’s a hyperactive time of the human life cycle. The whole life of the human being is a cycle and there are a certain periods of time when you’re hyperactive and then after 30 years something happens and you become –more wise, it’s a normal cycle of life. So how can we insert, how can we offer beautiful seeds to young people? It’s very important that we are offering these things.
Sofy: I’d like to ask just one last quick question about travel and globalization and mixing of cultures. You’re a performer of your own people’s traditional music but you travel all around the world and all the way through cyberspace and you share it with everyone from the entire planet which I think is like the best thing ever. It’s also a very unique position in being so very particular and specific of origin but performing for vastly different people all around Eastern Europe, Europe, the States more official concerts, festivals, all these different environments, and how that changes your relationship to what you do. How it affects kind of what you present and what you think about it in general. I think it’s really important work to share our our histories and our practices with each other and I really appreciate the way you do it.
Suor: Thank you. There is the physical body which we call Buor Kut in my culture which means Earth Energy and there is Salgyn Kut which is Air Energy and is related to the unseen world. The old emotions, old feelings, mind, consciousness, ghosts, or spirits or soul, everything, is defined under Air Energy. We call that Salgyn Kut and there is Motherkut which is related to ancestry and genes, it’s very important to remember and to honor our ancestry to be connected to our roots and my mission. So I follow these three directions and actually I forgot to say very important thing, these three need to remain all together, they create wholeness. The energy which hold that is called Trikut. That’s why we call Kut and Sür is the space where sound travels, so basically sound is brings all of them together. When some of them are imbalanced, they weaken. We believe that harmful spirits can come through the hole that opens from that weakness, and that would cause disease. It’s a very traditional way of perceiving life and culture.
Here’s a great paper about folding these concepts into pedagogy– https://www.europeanproceedings.com/article/10.15405/epsbs.2020.10.05.500 –Sofy
Each person has got Sür, water has Sür, my laptop, the plant, stone, even some electronic devices.
For my work, for my body I would like to physically do tours all over the world. I want to have a little bus–like a tour bus, but with a transformative effect so it can be turned into a stage. So I can travel wherever I want; like stop by the ocean for example, or stop somewhere in the forest, and people can come and experience amazing concerts and performances with projections into the trees and plants. That’s one of the ideas I would like and I would like to do that globally–I would like to discover those places, go to any country and meet indigenous people and collaborate with them and record their sounds. So that’s physically what I want to do and then there is Salgyn Kut which is Air. It became really powerful during the pandemic. You can actually do concerts through the internet. It has even more impact because it travels so quickly in that realm. You see the difference between that and the physical body. The physical body is slower and bigger, of course. Then there’s the realm of the unseen world where the your sound and image can travel quickly. So I’m planning to do them at the same time. I’m keeping both of them in balance because they need each other. This physical body experience and unseen world experience, they help each other, they go together and they work with each other.
I think it’s very important to do these concerts and performances globally and on the internet. Then you have more attention and people would like to experience you in person, they will come to the in-person events, so that’s kind of the platform I’m building and it’s all related to the non-profit project I’m also doing with my team. I love it. I think it’s so great to have this expansive practice that takes many forms and comes together and breaks apart again and moves through the world in all these different ways.
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.
