Heitor Villa-Lobos told Paris salons he had escaped from cannibals in the Amazon, and whether or not the story was true, it was brilliant anti-conservatory marketing. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1887 during a period of massive social upheaval, he learned music by secretly listening to his father's musical evenings, taught himself cello, clarinet and guitar, and after his father's death in 1899 supported his family playing in cinema and theater orchestras. Around 1905 he abandoned formal training entirely to absorb indigenous, African and street-band sounds from Brazil's interior.

This episode follows how his pianist wife Lucilia taught him the piano he needed to compose, how he was booed off stage at the 1922 Sao Paulo Festival of Modern Art while wearing one shoe and one carpet slipper, and how he moved to Paris to exhibit rather than study. ...