Years ago, The Missus and I first encountered — the verb carefully chosen — Gabrielle Roth and the Mirrors via a local greeting-card store known not just for its offbeat card assortment, but also for its soundtrack. “What is that?” we asked the proprietor, and he directed us to the Bones CD propped up by the cash register.

From her Web site:

Gabrielle Roth has turned thousands of people across the globe on to the inner, healing rhythms of their dancing souls, the creative brilliance of their innate originality and the unexpected daring to express themselves in theater, dance and poetry. Through her movement philosophy, the 5Rhythms®, Gabrielle and her certified teachers world-wide have helped people of all ages discover that when you put the psyche in motion, it heals itself.

Based in New York City, Gabrielle has written three books, produced three DVDs and 20 albums. Through her ongoing interactive-live theater, catalytic classes and workshops around the world, Gabrielle continues to inspire and guide people on the path of shaping life itself into a work of art.

Wikipedia adds:

[She] is a musician, author, music director, dancer, philosopher and recording artist in the world music and trance dance genres, with a special interest in shamanism. Known as the “urban shaman”, she is music director of the theatre company The Mirrors and has been a member of the Actor’s Studio… She is currently teaching experimental theater in New York based on The Roth 5Rhythms and training others to use shamanic methods within artistic, education, and healing contexts.

I didn’t know almost any of that before working on this post. I knew only her music. (I’d never heard of the “trance dance” genre, either. After reading Wikipedia’s entry on it, I think I know even less about it than I did from pure guesswork.) To “get” it, maybe you just need to know that the liner notes for 1989’s Bones lists the following instruments, among others:

“The Calling,” below, opens the Bones album and is typical: eight minutes of complex percussion, underlying and interwoven with something very much like a flute. It doesn’t strike me, exactly, as hypnotic — trance-inducing — but it’s not exactly melodic or “tuneful,” either. You won’t find yourself whistling the melody long after hearing it, even many times over. But you could fairly describe it as absorbing: quietly infectious, especially in the background when you’re working to (say) unravel a knotted plot. Not that I’ve ever used it for that purpose.

[Below, click Play button to begin The Calling. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 7:57 long.]