Sneak Preview: Soso Bala

ESTABLISHING SHOT, EXT. SOSO, EVENING

SUMAORO KANTE, as a young hunting apprentice and Prince of Soso, has suddenly reappeared after having been missing for three months, lost in the bush.  His dear and only sister, KASIYA KANTE, has left her three-year-old son, FAKOLY, with her husband, and come to see her newly returned brother with her own eyes.  They have had a joyful reunion and visited all day, and he is now escorting her home. All day, SUMAORO has been evasive about his whereabouts during his long absence.  KASIYA finally confronts him about it.

KASIYA: So. Where were you, really?

SUMAORO does not seem to hear her.  He seems to hear a sound and looks far away, to the horizon.  

KASIYA: Well?  

SUMAORO still seems lost in his reverie and does not respond.

KASIYA (calling out shrilly):  Sumaoro!

SUMAORO (with a start): Ah!

KASIYA:  Where were you?  And where were you just now?

SUMAORO stops walking.  

SUMAORO:  A certain...cave.  

KASIYA:  A cave?  

SUMAORO: A jinna came to me.  Tall and pale, with long hair down his back.  He led me south. We crossed the border into Manden, advanced three days through Nare Maghan’s country, then turned east to Folonengbe on the third.  When the moon was full, we arrived outside the cave. Until then I had kept careful bearings, but at that point the signs became...obscure. We had been in Folonengbe, of that I was sure, and the trees were those gueleba that grow there.  Yet when I consulted the stars for my position, they were such as they are here, in Soso.  And the moon. The moon was….like the reflection of a moon, like I was seeing it in water.  (He seems to be listening to something in his mind again, then composes himself once more).  The jinn went into the cave, but I espied at that moment one of the gueleba that had just dropped its seeds.  The thought was in me then to string my hammock in its branches and wait until daybreak for the animals to come, and to take easy shots at them from my position.  None came. I think...I think he must have wanted it that way. What came instead was… (he trails off as he becomes lost once again in the sound of the bala in his mind).

KASIYA:  What?

SUMAORO:  I have never heard a sound like it.  Kasiya, I have not slept since I heard it.  And I- I can’t stop hearing it now! It plays in my bones!  It rings and buzzes and- (Beat) And I don’t want it to stop. (Beat) I’m not sure what I would do if it stopped.  (He looks at KASIYA impatiently, realizing she does not understand). 

The jinnalu brought it out of the cave.  (He draws an arrow from his quiver and begins to sketch feverishly in the sand with it.)  Twenty keys of carved wood planed at different lengths to change the pitches, bound together with kapok fiber over gourds for resonating chambers.  In each gourd there is a little hole, covered with the filaments of a spider’s egg sac.  The keys are struck with mallets which are headed with gum which produces the sound….that sound!  The bala, they call it.  Bala. The finest instrument I have ever seen- I who made the n’goni, who made the bolon, who made the soron, who made the kerelengkengbeng, I, SUMAORO KANTE!!!  (Beat) How did I never conceive of this?  

KASIYA:  Well? What did they want for it?

SUMAORO laughs as though his sister has just told a hilarious joke, then becomes suddenly grave.

SUMAORO:  You.  

KASIYA chuckles nervously, assuring herself that her brother is only joking.

SUMAORO: Let’s get you home. It’s getting dark.