In June 2023, Snow Raven brought her signature “Arctic beatbox” to the stage at MAPS’ Psychedelic Science Conference. Born in the Republic of Sakha, deep in Arctic Siberia, Snow Raven has mastered an array of traditional vocal and performance techniques rooted in the Indigenous Sakha culture. Her work fuses ancestral folk traditions with physically demanding vocalizations — imitations of bird calls, reindeer breathing, and other animal sounds — to evoke a living dialogue with the natural world. She draws deeply from shamanic Sakha practices, using her voice as a bridge between human and animal consciousness. “Sakha shamanism is based on a natural, psychedelic state of consciousness,” she told DoubleBlind. “We believe that our bodies can enter transcendental states through drumming, singing, and chanting.” When Snow Raven performs, she does not simply mimic animals — she imagines becoming them. Through this act of embodied imagination, she enters what she describes as the “ki...