Sarava Exu (Gate)

Certainly Donoso's most ambitious and challenging undertaking to date, Saravá Exu is a symphonic poem of a Brasilian Quimbanda cult ritual, and the musical accompaniment of descent into one's own personal hell. In contrast with the continual pursuit of achievement that today's culture teaches us, the theme of "descent," found in many myths in the shape of the hero going underground to pass a period of solitude, is no longer represented. A cultural space existed in most traditional societies for such a period in a person's life and it was seen as necessary in order for the initiate to re-connect with their past and concomitantly with his collective unconscious, or humanity's primordial existence.