Soumaoro Kanté
Soumaoro Kanté, also called Sumanguru, is the sorcerer-king of Sosso and the great antagonist of the Sunjata epic. A blacksmith by caste and a master of dalilu, the accumulated occult power of the Mande world, he is styled the untouchable king, invulnerable to common weapons and dwelling amid a chamber of human-skin hangings, severed heads, and sacred owls that embody his strength. His most celebrated possession is the Sosso-bala, a sacred balafon later taken to be the origin of the Manding xylophone tradition. Soumaoro's overreach, above all the seizure of the wife of his nephew and chief general Fakoli, turns his own kin against him, and Balla Fasséké, held captive at his court, learns the songs that will one day praise his conqueror. At the battle of Kirina Sunjata strikes him with an arrow armed against his magic, breaking his power; in the epic he vanishes into a mountain cave. A historical ruler of the early thirteenth century underlies the figure, but tradition remembers him above all as the archetype of the malevolent sorcerer overthrown.
Domains
- sorcery
- kingship
- smithing
Powers
- wields formidable occult power (dalilu)
- changes shape and reappears at will in battle
Epithets
- Sumaoro, mansa bilenba — Soumaoro, the untouchable kingNiane, D. T. (1965). Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. London: Longman. (primary)
Relations
- enemy: Sunjata KeitaDefeated by Sunjata at the battle of Kirina.Niane, D. T. (1965). Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. London: Longman, pp. 40-68. (primary)
- enemy: FakoliHis own nephew and chief general, whom he estranges by seizing Fakoli's wife.Conrad, David C. (2004). Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples. Indianapolis: Hackett. (primary)
- enemy: Balla FassékéHolds Sunjata's griot captive and forces him into his service.Niane, D. T. (1965). Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. London: Longman. (primary)
Sources
- Soumaoro Kanté is the blacksmith sorcerer-king of Sosso and Sunjata's principal antagonist, defeated at Kirina.: Niane, D. T. (1965). Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. London: Longman, pp. 38-68. (primary); Johnson, John William (2003). The Epic of Son-Jara. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (primary); McNaughton, Patrick R. (1988). The Mande Blacksmiths. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (secondary)