The mid-1980s, the United States. Louis Sarno is 30 years old when one winter night he hears a piece of music on the radio that strikes him like no other music before. On discovering the musical culture of the pygmies of central Africa, he buys a one-way ticket to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, and tracks down the bayaka tribe with whom he has lived in the rain forest ever since. But when his 13-year-old son, Samedi, becomes seriously ill, he promises the boy that if he recovers, he will take him on a trip back to the United States. True to his promise, he accompanies his son on a discovery of modern American life.
