Gabrielle Roth

Gabrielle Roth, identified as the "urban shaman," serves as music director for the Mirrors. Her primal trance-dance music emerged from deep engagement with ballet, drama, movement therapy, ritual, and shamanic principles, while the cultural melting pot of New York City and the emerging consciousness scene at California's Esalen Institute further molded her approach. While prompting her dance students to move and emote, Roth observed an inherent rhythmic sequence she named The Wave or the 5 Rhythms. She recognized that numerous life experiences, including childbirth and lovemaking, progressed through flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and finally stillness. Movement through these inherent rhythms could transcend the ego's personality, sparking and discharging the feelings of fear, anger, grief, joy, and peace before culminating in ecstasy.

Roth's slogan, "Sweat Your Prayers," captures her philosophy across both movement workshops and recordings issued on her Raven Recording label. "We can dance our prayers and sweat our pain," says Roth. "Prayer is like letting go of everything that impedes the inner silence, of the tone, the OM, the essence of self and soul. Each of the five rhythms represents a state of being, and being is the language of existence. Movement, then, is our medicine and our path to ecstasy. So The Wave is how I pray."

Roth's recordings originated with her collaboration alongside the rock & roll band of her New York ritual theatre company, the Mirrors. "The first two albums I wrote were tribal rock and roll," she explains, "but then we decided to make simpler, primal recordings, like the music I used for my movement workshops. That's how Totem was born in 1985. This album was a groundbreaker; at that time the New Age stores could not relate to rhythms and drums as a spiritual path. Totem changed that." Roth rarely performs on her albums yet, in her role as music director, selects musicians suited to each concept and "conducts" the music through movement. Longtime Mirrors regulars encompass drummers Sanga of the Valley, a student of master Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunje, and Roth's husband and producer Robert Ansell. Additional contributors across the years have featured composer/guitarist Lenny Kaye (of the Patti Smith Band); Allison Cornell, strings (of Joe Jackson and Pat Benatar); Jai Uttal (Indian fusion musician); space music composer Raphael; and percussionists Gordy Ryan, Arthur Hull, and Cyro Baptista (of Paul Simon and Laurie Anderson).

Multiple Roth albums deliver complete musical expressions of the 5 Rhythms: Initiation, Bones, Trance, and The Endless Wave: Vol. I, (the soundtrack from her video dance workout, The Wave). Other releases spotlight individual rhythms: Stillpoint (stillness), Waves (chaos), and Ritual (flowing). Luna, a finalist for the 1994 INDIE Best New Age Album, delves into women's mysteries, whereas Tongues integrates primal vocal chanting. 1997's Zone Unknown introduces techno tracks for the first time. "You'll still know Zone Unknown is the Mirrors," says the group's drummer and producer Robert Ansell, "but we will push to new territory." Further details on Roth's rhythm work appear in her book Maps to Ecstasy: Teachings of an Urban Shaman (Nataraj Publishing).