WED., FEBRUARY 28, 2007
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Art Angel Gabrielle
by Robert Phoenix
Early one Sunday morning a few months back, I crossed the Bay from Berkeley to Sausalito with a good friend of mine; he’s a circuit dancer, meaning he goes to a lot of trance and tribal dance events. He was taking me to the Moving Center, a good-sized dance studio affiliated with urban shaman Gabrielle Roth. It was an event called “Sweat Your Prayers,” where a DJ mixed world music, trance and Enigma-styled grooves in a sequenced fashion, based on Roth’s “5-Rhythm” methodology. In lay terms, the “5-Rhythms” incorporate music that reflects states like “flow” and “staccato”; the music serves as a catalyst for dancers to move their bodies through various stages and thus experience emotional and physical release as well as heightened states of awareness.
The crowd that morning was definitely Marin County-centric, and after a few slower numbers to loosen the limbs, the BPMs picked up and self-consciousness gave way to free-form expression. I later found out that the session I went to was filled with “older” dancers, which might’ve explained the preponderance of tie-dye and Spandex, but what really struck me was the sense of permission that Roth’s program and practitioners gave people to lose it at 9 AM on a Sunday morning. This was the beatitude of the beat and the grace of the groove in the church of trance-dance.
Roth has been at the forefront of this type of work for well over two decades now. She deeply immersed herself in the tribal vibe at the end of the '80s, when her autobiography/workbook, Maps to Ecstasy: The Teachings of an Urban Shaman hit the stores, followed by her first releases with her ever-changing cast of players known as the Mirrors. Long before the Mancunians were bobbing and throbbing all night at the Hacienda, Roth was exploring the realm of trance both in her workshops and her recordings.
But what makes Roth truly unique is that, with the exception of occasional vocals and some percussion, she doesn’t really play anything at all. What she does on the recording side is craft the setting for the magic of the music to come through. Like a rhythmic muse, Roth dances and moves while her players create the soundtracks for her excursions in sonic rapture.
Roth records boast an impressive list of players; Cyro Baptista (Paul Simon), Jai Uttal (Pagan Love Orchestra), Babatunde Olatunji (Drums of Passion), Omar Hakim (Weather Report, Sting), Glen Velez (Paul Winter Consort, Steve Reich), Steve Scales (Talking Heads) and even eMusic’s own Lenny Kaye are just a few. Simply based on her supporting cast alone, it’s hard to dismiss Roth as being merely a tourist in the world of music.
Her early records, Totem and Initiation are more on the tribal rock tip, but Initiation released in conjunction with the aforementioned, Maps to Ecstasy: The Teachings of an Urban Shaman, marked the introduction of her 5-Rhythm (Wave) methodology. Initiation is deliberate in its approach and execution as she conducts primal suites designed to uncoil various parts of the body. As a soundtrack for movement it’s quite effective; as a listening experience it almost demands that one move to it. The recording is twenty-three years old yet still retains a certain resonance that helps keep it from sounding all that dated, especially on tracks like “Elbows” and “Knees,” which still feel suitably primal and exotic. Very few people were creating specific tribal-trance records in 1984, which makes Roth’s musical direction all the more intriguing and even visionary.
Her next release was Bones, which is much more rhythm-heavy than its predecessor and captures Roth in an animistic frame of mind, channeling the animal spirits of “Wolf,” “Raven,” “Snake,” “Dolphin” and “Deer.” I first bought this on cassette in 1990 after hearing it on college radio in Seattle. It was unlike anything else I'd heard and wasn’t typically new age at all. Within the next two years, I would discover Lights In A Fat City, O Yuki Conjugate and Jorge Reyes as contemporaries of Roth and her journey into ethno-ambience.
Much of the work that follows Bones is an extended exploration of music crafted for her 5-Rhythm method, with the recording quality improving with each successive release. Tongues, released in 1995, pushes the voice and vocals to the front of the mix and the pieces are more song-like in structure than many of her previous, percussive-trance-jams. One of the highlights of the record is “Ram,” which features Jai Uttal in a lush, atmospheric setting, repeating the name of God over and over at a relaxed and meditative tempo.
But the one recording of Roth’s available on eMusic that stands head and shoulders above all of her work is Refuge which features the Russian rocker Boris Grebenshikov on vocals. It’s deep, dark and moving and, unlike the majority of her music, it's about going from the outside in, versus the inside out, making it great for yoga and tantric encounters.
With her body of work as a teacher and author, producer and dancer, Roth is a visionary that has blazed a trail that still burns brightly, especially on a Sunday morning in the church of the eternal groove powered by the gospel of free and uninhibited expression.
The crowd that morning was definitely Marin County-centric, and after a few slower numbers to loosen the limbs, the BPMs picked up and self-consciousness gave way to free-form expression. I later found out that the session I went to was filled with “older” dancers, which might’ve explained the preponderance of tie-dye and Spandex, but what really struck me was the sense of permission that Roth’s program and practitioners gave people to lose it at 9 AM on a Sunday morning. This was the beatitude of the beat and the grace of the groove in the church of trance-dance.
Roth has been at the forefront of this type of work for well over two decades now. She deeply immersed herself in the tribal vibe at the end of the '80s, when her autobiography/workbook, Maps to Ecstasy: The Teachings of an Urban Shaman hit the stores, followed by her first releases with her ever-changing cast of players known as the Mirrors. Long before the Mancunians were bobbing and throbbing all night at the Hacienda, Roth was exploring the realm of trance both in her workshops and her recordings.
But what makes Roth truly unique is that, with the exception of occasional vocals and some percussion, she doesn’t really play anything at all. What she does on the recording side is craft the setting for the magic of the music to come through. Like a rhythmic muse, Roth dances and moves while her players create the soundtracks for her excursions in sonic rapture.
Roth records boast an impressive list of players; Cyro Baptista (Paul Simon), Jai Uttal (Pagan Love Orchestra), Babatunde Olatunji (Drums of Passion), Omar Hakim (Weather Report, Sting), Glen Velez (Paul Winter Consort, Steve Reich), Steve Scales (Talking Heads) and even eMusic’s own Lenny Kaye are just a few. Simply based on her supporting cast alone, it’s hard to dismiss Roth as being merely a tourist in the world of music.
Her early records, Totem and Initiation are more on the tribal rock tip, but Initiation released in conjunction with the aforementioned, Maps to Ecstasy: The Teachings of an Urban Shaman, marked the introduction of her 5-Rhythm (Wave) methodology. Initiation is deliberate in its approach and execution as she conducts primal suites designed to uncoil various parts of the body. As a soundtrack for movement it’s quite effective; as a listening experience it almost demands that one move to it. The recording is twenty-three years old yet still retains a certain resonance that helps keep it from sounding all that dated, especially on tracks like “Elbows” and “Knees,” which still feel suitably primal and exotic. Very few people were creating specific tribal-trance records in 1984, which makes Roth’s musical direction all the more intriguing and even visionary.
Her next release was Bones, which is much more rhythm-heavy than its predecessor and captures Roth in an animistic frame of mind, channeling the animal spirits of “Wolf,” “Raven,” “Snake,” “Dolphin” and “Deer.” I first bought this on cassette in 1990 after hearing it on college radio in Seattle. It was unlike anything else I'd heard and wasn’t typically new age at all. Within the next two years, I would discover Lights In A Fat City, O Yuki Conjugate and Jorge Reyes as contemporaries of Roth and her journey into ethno-ambience.
Much of the work that follows Bones is an extended exploration of music crafted for her 5-Rhythm method, with the recording quality improving with each successive release. Tongues, released in 1995, pushes the voice and vocals to the front of the mix and the pieces are more song-like in structure than many of her previous, percussive-trance-jams. One of the highlights of the record is “Ram,” which features Jai Uttal in a lush, atmospheric setting, repeating the name of God over and over at a relaxed and meditative tempo.
But the one recording of Roth’s available on eMusic that stands head and shoulders above all of her work is Refuge which features the Russian rocker Boris Grebenshikov on vocals. It’s deep, dark and moving and, unlike the majority of her music, it's about going from the outside in, versus the inside out, making it great for yoga and tantric encounters.
With her body of work as a teacher and author, producer and dancer, Roth is a visionary that has blazed a trail that still burns brightly, especially on a Sunday morning in the church of the eternal groove powered by the gospel of free and uninhibited expression.
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