For Gaeya, making her ambient pop music blooms from first listening to the land.

The Swedish musician takes herself into the wilderness with only a recording device and her voice as an instrument. As she patiently waits for the land to speak to her and inspire her vocals, she also captures the natural sounds of the environment. Her music-making process is part of her Sami heritage and the Indigenous people of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. She uses the joik, a traditional form of song in Sami music.

“It’s a communication of the soul, an interpretation of each soul,” Gaeya said. “Every single living thing has its own joik. Every tree has its joik, every creek, every mountain. That’s what I’m connecting to when I’m in a space like this. I’m connecting to the mountains. I hear the voice of the mountains.”

Gaeya is the newest artist in residence at Green Box in Green Mountain Falls, which puts on the Green Box Arts Festival every summer. During their residencies, artists from around the globe stay in the tiny mountain town for a short period of time, creating new works to share with the community.

Gaeya will use drums, singing bowls and vocals to facilitate sound healings and group meditations this month in the Green Box Skyspace in Green Mountain Falls. The observatory-like light chamber, by American artist James Turrell, features an opening in the ceiling that reveals sunrise or sunset during shows. Visitors sit on benches inside the chamber.

Performances are Saturday and Sunday and April 27. Reservations are required. Go online to greenboxarts.org/skyspace. Gaeya also will perform May 1 with Colorado Springs musician J. Chang-Tablada at Ent Center for the Arts.

Music has long been a way for her to communicate and express herself. She began with classical music at 10 and five years later started to make a living playing in multiple pop, rock, country, folk and rockabilly bands. But it always felt like a divided life: one part show business and music and the other part nature. In her 20s she realized she could combine both halves to make a whole.

“For me there is no separation between nature and humans,” she said. “We are nature. If we’re spending time in nature and immersing ourselves in the possibility of what is out there, then within nature we automatically reconnect with our true nature.”

She describes what she now makes as earth music with electronic and world influences. It’s ancient singing wrapped into pop music, she says, and it’s intended to inspire hope in people and spread messages about sustainability and reconnecting with nature. Her first EP, “Awakening,” was released in 2021.

“Every song is set in the process of awakening one’s self — finding your own path, starting your own journey,” Gaeya said. “Feeling that connection with nature for the first time. You wake up and say wow, there is something here I haven’t experienced before. From there you start to question things, beliefs you had that aren’t matching anymore with what you see and feel. The next step is finding out your truth.”

There’s no knowing what sort of music she’ll produce during her residency; that’s up to the land and the Skyspace. She’s only there to listen and take note.

“Sometimes people say it’s so quiet in nature, but that’s where I hear the music,” Gaeya said. “Listening to the birds. Even the sound of the wind through the trees. You hear a symphony of sounds. When you’re reconnecting with nature, you hear the breathing of the planet. It vibrates differently in different places in the world. That’s what I’m trying to interpret and find a way to communicate that through me.”

Contact the writer: 636-0270