♪♪ -Coming up on "Great Performances," I'm Scott Yoo.

In the late 1800s, in far-off rural Paraguay, a talented young guitarist of Guarani Indian descent set out to conquer Latin America.

So this Spanish music, this was like the foundation for Barrios.

-In the Paraguayan folk music.

-He was rejected by the establishment.

-Segovia was European.

Barrios was an indigenous person from the other side of the tracks.

-Did he ever play any of Barrios' music?

-Never.

-He was turned away by society.

-The families didn't really like him.

-Too poor, he's too dark.

-Yes.

-But he persisted against prejudice.

-And he got the invitation to play for the president.

-Can you imagine this person from rural Paraguay is playing in the presidential palace?

He stayed true to his roots.

-He just wrapped himself around his Guarani heritage.

-And he emerged the greatest guitar composer of the 20th century.

Up next on "Now Hear This" -- Barrios.

From the jungles of Paraguay, he became the Chopin of the guitar.

♪♪ Major funding for "Great Performances" is provided by... ...and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

-Today, I'm in the Cathedral of Montevideo, with brilliant young guitarist, Thibaut Garcia.

Because in this very cathedral, 100 years ago, another brilliant young guitarist was inspired to write his masterpiece, "La Catedral."

-For me, it was a dream.

I mean, I'm dreaming about this moment for -- I don't know -- 4 or 5 years, so being here is very, very special.

♪♪ -Across his long career, Agustín Barrios played nearly every country in South and Central America.

He faced prejudice and personal struggle at nearly every turn.

♪♪ But in the end, he created a new kind of guitar music, inspired equally by the great masters and the folk music of Latin America.

♪♪ ♪♪ To look into that, Thibaut and I went to rural Paraguay, to the area where Barrios was born.

So you've never been here, right?

-No, I've never been here.

It's the first time.

♪♪ Actually, this country is maybe the one I never expected to go to, so that's like a dream.

-So, coming to Paraguay, does this give you any more insight into Barrios' music?

-Every time he speaks about the jungle, the jungles of Paraguay, he speaks about the trees, he speaks about the forest, so, actually, now I understand precisely what he had in his mind, you know?

♪♪ ♪♪ Can you imagine, like, you were born here, you were a guitarist 100 years ago.

What are the opportunities to become one of the most incredible guitarists in the world?

It's crazy.

This is incredible.

-We were here to visit Paraguayan harpist Juanjo Corbalán and his quartet.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Applause ] -Now, Juanjo, the music we just heard, is that like a very traditional Paraguayan tune?

-Yes, it's a very traditional tune.

The name of this tune is "Carreta Guype."

This means "under the ox cart."

The composer was José del Rosario Diarte, and also, he was a very contemporary of Barrios.

-I know that Barrios was born very close from here, right?

So, maybe, do you think he could have played or listened to this music during his youth and during his life?

-Yes.

And also, his father played this kind of tune, yes, this kind of folk music.

-Can you tell me about this harp?

This is incredible.

-This is the Paraguayan harp.

Actually, it's the national instrument, so we use it a lot in the traditional music.

-Do you have anything you can play that's very typical of this instrument?

-Yes, of course.

We can play one of the most famous tunes in the harp.

This tune is "El Pájaro Campana."

"Pájaro" means "bird," and "campana" is "bell."

This is the song of the bell bird.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Applause ] -So, Thibaut, do you hear this folkloric element in this music in what you play?

-Yeah, you can hear it.

But what is also amazing with Barrios is all the different influences he got in all his life -- travels, Baroque music, Romantic -- it's incredible.

-To hear about Barrios' many influences, we headed to the beautiful El Cantoral concert hall in Mexico City to meet Dr. Fred Sheppard -- a great guitar maker and the world's leading authority on Barrios.

♪♪ -Barrios was a superb classical guitarist and composer who came from a very remote corner of Paraguay, eventually performing in 28 different countries.

-These are programs?

-These are the programs that were developed.

A great example of a typical program of Barrios in the middle of his career is this one.

It illustrates the varied material that he would utilize in his concerts.

He begins with Mozart and Beethoven.

In the second part of the program, he plays Bach, Mendelssohn, and then his own composition.

And then, he played a little bit of Spanish music.

And the he finishes with Chilean aires that he got from the Inca country in Chile.

-So it seems like he's incorporating five elements all in one program.

-He was rooted in the classics.

But his music, his composition, came from the heavens.

♪♪ ♪♪ Over time, he became recognized as the great composer of the 20th century and the most important guitarist of the first half of the 20th century.

-Including Segovia?

-Well, Segovia was a very important guitarist, but there could not possibly be two more different people.

Segovia was European.

Barrios was an indigenous person from a very remote country.

A Spaniard at that time period would always be regarded as being of an elevated level of society, whereas Barrios, from Paraguay upriver, was from the other side of the tracks.

-Did they ever meet?

-They met several times.

The first time was in a hotel room in Buenos Aires.

Barrios had just come from a recording session.

As guitarists do, they passed the guitar back and forth and played for each other.

And Barrios played a composition that he was working on, which became his great -- his magnum opus, "La Catedral."

And Segovia said, "Oh, wow, would you send me the score for that?"

There was miscommunication, and Segovia never got the score.

Well, as time went by, Segovia would have had access to the score, and yet he never did play it.

-Did he ever play any of Barrios' music?

-Never.

-Do you think he was jealous that Barrios was really successful with his compositions?

-I think looking and listening to the Segovia compositions, it's not engaging music.

But when you hear Barrios, it's brilliant, romantic, fabulous music that Segovia just couldn't touch with his compositional skills.

-Mm.

Of the 28 countries Barrios played, Brazil was one of his most important stops.

So I went to Rio de Janeiro to visit the authority on his concerts there, Cyro Delvizio.

Like Barrios, he's also a guitarist and composer.

-Before I show you around, I want to show you this guitar.

It's a copy from a Barrios guitar.

-Oh, wow.

-You were talking to Federico Sheppard, right?

-Fred.

-Yeah, yeah.

So, he made this guitar.

-No kidding.

-Yeah.

And he made a copy of the first good guitar Barrios had.

So this is a copy of a Ramírez from 1911.

He made sure all the details are close to the original guitar, the mother of pearl, and the sound of it.

-Beautiful.

-So this guitar has a funny story.

When Barrios was traveling in a car, they had an accident and the car went down on a river, so the guitar sunk inside the car.

-Oh, wow.

-And Barrios dove into the river and rescued the guitar.

But it won't sound good anymore.

-Of course.

-So Sheppard made this copy to restore the sound of the guitar.

-Okay.

-So now we can hear it.

-All right, let's hear it.

-So, Scott, I wanted to bring you here because Barrios played on this stage in 1929.

-Incredible.

-Now we have an orchestra rehearsing there, so we will be here in the entrance hall that is just as beautiful as the main hall.

So, he started as a folk musician, learning folk tunes from his father.

And then, one guy called Gustavo Sosa Escalada saw the young boy and became his tutor.

Gustavo Sosa Escalada was very well-connected with the Spanish guitar repertoire and started introducing this to Barrios.

-Okay.

-The first one, it's Aguado.

♪♪ ♪♪ So, Aguado taught José Asencio, that taught Julián Arcas.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ And then, Julián Arcas taught García Tolsa.

-Okay.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Mm.

-And then, García Tolsa taught Gustavo Sosa Escalada, who thought Barrios.

♪♪ ♪♪ -You can really hear that Barrios is kind of part of the evolution of all those composers.

-Yeah, I think so.

It's like a football game -- one player sending the ball to the next one.

-So this Spanish music, this was like the foundation for Barrios?

-Yeah, but he grew up to connect himself to many other kinds of music styles and so on.

-So if he had not traveled anywhere else, he probably would have stayed a Spanish composer.

-Probably.

And the Paraguayan folk music.

-Right.

It's amazing.

-By 1920, Barrios had been established in Montevideo, Uruguay, for 10 years, and Segovia got a series of concerts there.

And this was one of the times that Barrios and Segovia were playing in the same city at the same time.

Segovia played a very, very Spanish program, and it consisted of Spanish composers, classical composers, finished with Mozart, other Spanish composers.

So Spanish, Spanish, Spanish, classical, Spanish.

-Is that like a usual way of building, making his programs?

-He really wanted to create a brand, and that was his brand.

And I think he was trying to pull the Spanish guitar into the classical world... -Yeah.

-...and he did it very successfully.

So, Barrios was in the same city, but in a slightly lesser theater.

Barrios, of course, every day, he would read the newspapers and read the reviews, and he... "Oh, he played that program.

Okay."

So, Barrios, on very short notice, made an entirely Spanish and classical program and basically copied the same program to prove that he could do the same thing.

And then, followed it up with another concert of his own compositions, just to artistically say, "Whatever you can do, I can do better.

And, oh, by the way, I'm also a great composer."

-[ Chuckles ] That's hard to beat.

-There was actually another time that Segovia and Barrios crossed paths.

Barrios and Segovia played the same night, and they were staying in the same hotel.

And the fans of Segovia went to the hotel, and they said, "In what room is the maestro guitarist staying?"

And they said, "Room 23."

So Segovia arrives, and he's surrounded by his fans, and he invites everybody up to his room, and they pass room 23.

And one of the people in the crowd said, "Wait, wait, wait, isn't this your room?"

And Segovia said, "That belongs to the barbed wire fence," making a reference to Barrios' steel strings and also kind of casting him as a country bumpkin farm boy out with the cattle.

-So, was steel string somehow taboo with classical players back then?

-It was kind of a class issue.

Only very wealthy people could play gutstrings.

These gutstrings were only made in Europe, and they were very expensive, and they didn't last.

In high humidity, Barrios played 12 hours a day, so he would destroy strings, and then he couldn't get the replacements.

But, likely, when he was in the country, all he could get would be steel strings.

-But even nowadays, I mean, as a guitar player, like, if I would play steel strings, people wouldn't consider me as a classical guitar player, or at least not as a classical repertoire guitar player, because it really sounds, at least on the paper, like a folk instrument.

And maybe Segovia thought it was not noble enough to play on steel strings.

-In the rarefied atmosphere of the Spanish guitar, it was gutstring only.

-Mm.

-Did Barrios play steel strings all his life, or did he change when he was even more famous to gutstrings or something like this?

-It was all his life.

But always the innovator.

After Barrios got a lot of criticism, he modified his steel strings with little rubber dampers, and that smoothed out the harshness.

And Barrios did them one better, you see.

He was an innovator, so he added one more fret to the Spanish guitar so he could play to new heights.

-Mm.

-[ Chuckles ] -In Montevideo, while Segovia played the huge Teatro Solís, Barrios played a much smaller hall.

-He was playing in this beautiful Sala Verdi.

-Here?

-Yes, just right where we are.

Barrios, at this time, was already an incredible composer.

He was a really mature composer because he was taught by Fabini, who was a violinist.

-He's on the Uruguayan money, I think.

-Exactly.

Yes, he is.

And that was Barrios' teacher for music theory, music composition, and of course, the music by Bach.

That's the reason why, in Barrios' music, you find some inspiration from the Bach music.

And I want to show you just in a little prelude, for example, the Prelude in C Minor.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I know that sounds a little bit like... ♪♪ -Yeah, exactly.

Yes.

-I mean, of course, not in a major key, but... -It's the same type of movement.

You can feel the inspiration.

There is another prelude by Barrios that reminds me a lot of Toccata and Fugue by Bach, that sounds like this.

♪♪ -Mm.

I love that D pedal that he... ♪♪ Where he just keeps repeating it over and over and over.

-Yes, and with the guitar using the open strings like that.

-Really nice.

-But he was not only like a big fan of Bach, he was also really inspired by the Romantic composers like Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann.

And I like to call him the Chopin of the guitar, and I want to show you why, because he composed, for example, a beautiful mazurka called Mazurka Appassionata.

I really think -- I'm sure about that -- when he composed it, he was thinking about Chopin.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Maybe it was his folk-music background that connected Barrios to Romantic composers like Chopin, who also loved folk music.

♪♪ ♪♪ And for more folk music, I met Cyro again in Rio.

Cyro, it's so beautiful here.

-Yeah, yeah.

Brazil is beautiful, and people forget that Barrios came here.

Brazil was a huge part of his life.

-I mean, you literally wrote the book on Barrios, right?

Or Barrios in Brazil, anyway.

-I read almost 10 years of newspapers just to find that Barrios made half of the concerts of his life here in Brazil.

This was a huge part of his life.

-That's incredible.

-So, he entered the country two times in two tours, interacting with the local music, with local musicians, poets, and lots of people.

-So Brazilian music showed up in his own music.

-Yeah, I'm about to show you that.

-Okay.

-So a choro band normally has a flute... -Okay.

-...a pandero... -Tambourine?

-Yeah, a kind of tambourine.

A cavaquinho.

-What's that?

-It's a small, four-string instrument.

-Like a guitar?

-A little guitar, yes.

And a seven-string guitar.

-Okay.

-But today, I will be performing the six-string guitar.

It's what we got.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Bravo.

-Thank you.

So, Tomas, what was that?

-It was "Dengoso."

-"Dengoso"?

Yeah, it's a choro from Joao Pernambuco.

-Okay, what's a choro?

-Choro is a style of music that was born in Brazil, and it probably had to do with the mixture of the European melodies and the African rhythm that were happening here, when they mixed.

-It's fusion music.

-Yes.

-Tell me about the composer.

-Well, Joao Pernambuco was his name.

He was already a band leader and recording, and he was a very important guitar player in Brazil.

Barrios came to Brazil at a time where Joao Pernambuco was already known, and they had a picture together in a cavaquinho shop where they were probably playing together many tunes.

-Did this choro, did this bleed into Barrios's music?

-Yeah, I think so.

So, he started composing some Brazilian music, as well.

And then he composed a maxixe.

-Maxixe.

-Yeah, maxixe is a popular rhythm from Brazil.

We just did an arrangement.

-So this is a guitar piece?

-Yeah, it's a solo guitar piece, and we did the arrangement to put the choro group with the original Barrios.

-Let's hear it.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Okay.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Bravo.

So Barrios was inspired by folk music.

-Yeah, definitely he was.

When he landed in a country, he could pick songs like this to hear them and make very fast arrangements on the guitar to be able to play them for the people living in the country.

You know, a lot of classical composers, when they composed, they used folk music as their imagination did.

But Barrios really knew the folk music because he started with that.

I mean, he was folk music.

-Yes, exactly.

You can feel that flavor of folk music in his compositions, that countryside in his music.

You can feel the Paraguayan dance.

Normally, people play "Danza Paraguaya" on the guitar, but we also can play it on the Paraguayan harp.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Organ plays ] -Barrios' masterpiece, "La Catedral," also has links to Bach.

Again in the cathedral of Montevideo, where Barrios himself listened to the organ, we met Cristina Banegas.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Somehow, whenever I enter a church, I can't think of any other music than Bach.

It's perfect.

-I agree with you.

I think the very first time when I listened to the music from Bach, it was, of course, in a church, but immediately I say to myself, "Oh, this is my life."

-Hearing this beautiful chorale here in the incredible cathedral of Montevideo, I think it's really touching because we know that the second movement was composed after he could hear the organ here.

So actually, imagine Barrios was at the same place as us 100 years ago, listening to the organ.

It really kind of imitates the organ with the guitar, right?

-Yes, yes, I'm sure, I'm sure.

And this B minor, and chorales in B minor is always just sad.

-Yeah.

-And, you know, I would like to play this second movement of Barrios' "Catedral."

-Andante religioso.

-Andante religioso.

May I?

-Of course, yes.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -What I can feel, my first feeling is that this is a way to understand his inspiration.

It's kind of the same language, but speaking with a different accent, and I love it so much.

And you know, now that you just played it, I would like also to play it on my guitar.

-Please, go ahead.

-Yeah?

Okay.

[Tuning guitar] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -This looks like a place fit for a king.

-Yeah, it used to be the presidential palace.

Barrios was touring here for three years, and he finally got an invitation to play for the president.

-Can you imagine this person from rural Paraguay is playing in the presidential palace of Brazil?

-It would be an indescribable experience.

-So, what did he play here?

-The record says that he played something classical, like a Beethoven or Chopin, and his own compositions.

It's an interesting story, because he enters Brazil in 1915 through the south, and there, he was making a huge success.

So he was confident enough to come to Rio de Janeiro, the capital of Brazil.

And on his debut, there was many journalists, writers, politicians, important people, who listened to Barrios.

Those journalists, weeks earlier, were talking badly about the guitar because there was a lot of prejudice against the guitar.

-Why?

It's a low-class instrument or something?

-People thought that, in that time.

And then, one amazing writer called Cuello Neto, he was the most important writer of that time, he published later an article called "Redemption."

And this became the invitation letter for Barrios.

When he arrived anywhere else in Brazil, the journalists would quote a part of this article.

And with that invitation, he could enter anywhere, including the presidential palace.

-So what do you think he played of his own here, right here?

Probably something with a Brazilian twist, right?

-I think so, I think so.

When you are honoring someone from the highest position from a country, you would probably play something related to that country.

And the "Choro da Saudade" that he composed here in Brazil, it has this character.

So it's a great piece.

Let me show you.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -By this point, Barrios had built a successful career as a traveling artist, but it was at great sacrifice.

-This is Teatro Solís.

-Wow.

It's beautiful.

-Do you remember what Fred told us?

-Barrios played here.

-Barrios played here, but Segovia played here first.

So, what happened is that, after a few years, Barrios was very successful, and he could play in this Teatro Solís and other major halls in the whole region.

But the thing is that he gave a lot to his career.

And what happens is that -- -He was always on the road.

-Because of that, he also had a lot of personal struggle.

Well, Barrios' personal life was pretty difficult because, at least, he had two failed relationships.

-Here in Uruguay?

-Not in Uruguay.

The thing is that, the women were in different countries, what made it very, very difficult.

And the families didn't really like him.

They didn't like that -- -He's too poor, he's too dark.

-Exactly.

Too poor, too dark.

A rural musician from Paraguay, you see.

So that was very difficult.

And we know also that he had two children, at least, and he never saw them.

-Sad life.

-Yeah.

You know, Thibaut, we can both totally relate to being away from home.

-Yes.

And of course, can you imagine at the time of Barrios, traveling was much longer.

For example, I remember my biggest tour was seven months in the United States.

Seven months of touring, you meet a lot of people, you learn a lot of cultural things, but you miss people, also.

-You know, I was reading the liner notes to your recording, and you had the poetry of Barrios in Spanish.

Now, my Spanish isn't great, but you can tell that he's writing about missing home.

-He wrote a beautiful poem called "Bohemio," and it's an autoportrait, saying that his life of travels is like the old troubadours of the medieval era.

And he says that the art is giving light to his life.

Isn't that super beautiful?

And what is incredible with Barrios is that he played the guitar on stage, but he also recited some poems, sometimes solo and sometimes with his brother.

-His own poems?

-His own poems.

He was a guitarist, composer, and a poet.

-Very cool.

-Yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -¡Cuán raudo es mi girar!

Yo soy veleta Que moviéndose a impulsos del destino Va danzando en loco torbellino Hacia los cuatro vientos del planeta.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Llevo en mí el plasma de una vida inquieta Y en mi vagar incierto, peregrino ♪♪ El Arte va alumbrando mi camino Cual si fuera un fantástico cometa.

♪♪ ♪♪ Yo soy hermano en gloria y en dolores De aquellos medievales trovadores Que sufrieron romántica locura.

♪♪ Como ellos, también, cuando haya muerto, ¡Dios solo sabe en qué lejano puerto Iré a encontrar mi tosca sepultura!

♪♪ -Around this time Barrios' personality began to split as he faced an internal struggle.

Fred had the photos to walk us through it.

-By about 1923, Barrios really had developed as an artist.

He also has the extra frets on the guitar.

-But this is also very important, this last fret, because we don't have it on every guitar, and sometimes when you play some Barrios pieces, you cannot play all the notes because he composed especially for that, right?

-Exactly.

The world has been trying to catch up to Agustín Barrios since about 1920, and that's the reality.

This was a photograph taken in the home of one of Barrios' principal students, and it really showed him at the ultimate expression of his concert career as Agustín Barrios.

Very professional.

His presentation was as European as he could make it.

Then, because of a lot of internal pressures in his family, and he was getting close to the age of 40, he had a midlife crisis.

And when he emerged from this midlife crisis... -Oh, wow.

-Wow.

-That's who he became.

Barrios underwent a complete spiritual, physical, and cosmetic transformation, and underwent the earliest cosmetic plastic surgery ever performed in South America.

-Why did he do this?

Was this sort of a publicity thing, or it was something -- sort of conflict within himself that he was resolving?

What led him to do this?

-You mean undergo three surgeries that had never been done, with no antibiotics, and no guarantee of success?

There's something in him that was exploding.

He wasn't being accepted in the European model, and he had to break out.

He just wrapped himself around his Guaraní heritage.

His transition included changing his name to Nitsuga.

Nitsuga Mangoré.

-Nitsuga, Agustín.

-Agustín spelled backwards.

-Spelled backwards.

-And Mangoré was the name of one of the last indigenous chiefs of the tribes of Paraguay.

If we look at a typical Guaraní, this is who you would have encountered on the Rio Paraguay.

This was taken from the earliest ever motion-picture film from Paraguay from 1924.

And this is Barrios after his transition.

-One of the first places Barrios went after becoming Mangoré was back to Brazil.

I wanted to know how the audience received him.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Beautiful.

-Thank you.

-You know, that muted pizzicato, that is such a beautiful...

I love it.

-Yeah, I think it sounds like nature.

So, by changing himself into Mangoré, the life of Barrios became better.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-I mean, I find that a little surprising.

I mean, that's a huge risk, to do the plastic surgery, to wear the traditional costumes.

I mean, did people think he was some kind of a curiosity or...?

-Yeah, a little bit.

It was an exotic figure, even for Brazil that has Guaraní Indians.

-Mm-hmm.

-But the outcome was that he had more concerts, and people got interested.

But I think that Barrios was revealing his true self.

-So they saw something honest or authentic on stage.

-Yeah, I think.

And by his manner of playing the guitar, he would convince anyone.

So, let's walk a little bit.

-Okay.

You lead the way.

-To convince the audience, it was an easy job.

But to convince the critics, oh, much harder.

The guy was surrounded by palm trees on the stage, dressed as an Indian.

-In a concert.

This is not an opera.

-Yeah.

-In the concert.

-And the critics were in disbelief.

But by the end of the concert, they were truly convinced.

-Huh.

-And they started writing good things about Barrios.

So, Barrios' first move was to present himself to the newspapers.

So he sent pictures of him dressed as an Indian with some Guaraní messages, with translations.

And he said, "I am the authentic message of the great Guaraní race."

-He's the authentic messenger of the Guaraní race.

-Yeah.

-Wow.

-It's a powerful message.

-That's big.

-And he started to write more in Guaraní, and even in his programs, he would print his manifesto, called "Profession of Faith."

-"Profession of Faith.

You mean his music is a profession of faith?

-Yeah.

In that text, he would do a creation mythology for the birth of the guitar.

"Tupa, the supreme spirit of my tribe, found me one day in the flowering woods, in contemplation of nature.

And he said to me, 'Take this mysterious box and unveil its secrets.'

And locking inside it all the singing birds of the forest, he left it in my hands.

One night, Yasi, the Moon Goddess, feeling the sadness in my Indian soul, gave me six silver moonbeams -- the strings -- to help me decipher its secrets.

And the miracle happened.

From the bottom of the box rose the wondrous symphony of all the voices in the nature of America.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -After conquering nearly every stage in South America, Barrios finally came to Mexico City... and so did Segovia.

-When Barrios arrived here in November of '33, he had completed the evolution of his character.

He became Agustín Barrios Mangoré, so he was a blend of his old life and his new identity.

There was almost a mania here because Barrios, as an Indigenous character, was recognized as that one Indigenous person who elevated European culture.

And he was seen as the true response to the conquista, to the conquest of Mexico.

Even his advertisements promised that he would be accompanied during his concerts by the spirits of the great dead composers and the Aztec gods.

Barrios, he could play three concerts in one day!

Complete full concerts.

And different programs!

And when Segovia arrived, he found himself shut out of his preferred theater, and he had to go to a second-rate movie theater.

Segovia and his new wife were horrified!

The theater was only one-third full.

The review said that Segovia was in a terrible, terrible mood.

The next day, he canceled all his concerts and did something he had never done in his life.

He got on an airplane.

He ran away.

And here we have the final conquering of the Europeans, the conquest of Mexico and all of the New World was reversed by an Indian with a guitar.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Once more in the cathedral that birthed it, Thibaut wanted to finish Barrios' masterpiece.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Barrios wrote the last movement of "La Catedral," inspired by exiting into the busy life of Uruguay.

-The noise of the street, all the life boiling around.

-He captured this in his music, as he did the very soul of Latin America.

And through his music, he took Latin America to the world.

Something perhaps only Agustín Barrios Mangoré could have done.

♪♪ I'm Scott Yoo, and I hope you can Now Hear This.

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