Emile Desportes was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 composer, painter, inventor and explorer.

He studied composition with Paul Dukas

Paul Dukas

Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions...

, but soon became more interested in other activities. After the Second World War, Desportes became rich from his inventions. He also painted, in a style influenced by Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...

, and even made a short film of Rousseau's life. In the 1950s Desportes embarked on an expedition to the Amazon basin

Amazon Basin

The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...

, partly to study the music of the Amazonian tribes.

Most of his compositions were written for wind instruments.