For composer/performer/musician's musician, and social observer João Bosco, Cabral's words were enough to spark an entire concert. For the past two years, he has been presenting that concert, called "Dá Licença Meu Senhor" (Excuse Me, Sir), throughout the world. It has also become the basis of Bosco's 18th record album, which bears the same title.
With this concert, Bosco honors other galos who have, each in his own place and at his own point of time, helped to bring whatever elements of morning exist in today's Brazil. Included is classical music, like "Melodia Sentimental" inspired by Villa-Lobos' "Floresta do Amazonas," Zequinha de Abreu's "Tico-Tico no Fubá" with its evocation of Carmen Miranda, and Chico Buarque's recent "Pagodespell." Bosco has not been afraid to reach for emotional highs and the waves of saudade (longing) among Brazilians in the audience living overseas might always wash back to the beaches of Rio.
But the man who has been called one of Brazil's "national treasures" would not be permitted to give a concert without some of his own works. Included in the evening will be some of Bosco's own classics, done in what the San Francisco Chronicle critic described as his unique performing style: "He is a subtle and swinging singer who revels in the sensuousness of the sound of words, caressing the vowels, accenting the consonants with the click, hiss and pop of a percussionist. He has created a marvelous idiosyncratic scat style, a mix of Ella Fitzgerald, bebop and the sounds of a Brazilian batucada (drumming)."
Through his career, Bosco has traveled the world many times over. His recent tours of Dá Licença Meu Senhor have already taken him to 15 countries including, in the last few months, Bosnia. Despite this, and despite the fact that he lives much of the time in Rio and has recently contracted for an apartment in New York to facilitate his recording work, he continues to think of himself as very much a Mineiro (native from the state of Minas Gerais). In Dá Licença Meu Senhor he sings "Peixe Vivo/O Vento", which compares the Mineiro's need for cold water "like a fish" with the Bahian's need of wind so that he can sail his jangada (raft).
Born in Ponte Nova in Minas Gerais to a Lebanese family, Bosco had no formal musical training but, literally learned the art in his own backyard. His grandmother played the mandolin, his mother the piano, his sister sang, his brother composed. By watching, he found himself able to do all of that. But it was his father, in particular, who adored Noel Rosa and sang samba, who shaped Bosco's growth. In Dá Licença Meu Senhor Bosco will perform Rosa's "O Gago Apaixonado."
By the age of 12, Bosco had been given his first guitar, and formed his first rock band. A few years later he went off to study engineering at the University in Ouro Preto, but music -- and soccer -- were still his true loves and he had no question in his mind that he would become a professional performer. Others agreed. The great lyricist Vinícius de Moraes heard some of his early music and wrote words for it.
In the '70s a hurricane force of bossa nova, tropicalismo and jazz was hurtling across Brazil. Engineering student Bosco was blown away by the innovations and the artistry of Brazilian musicians João Gilberto, Tom Jobim and Milton Nascimento and Americans Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Ray Charles. By 1972, he had been asked to make his first recording by no less than Tom Jobim who, on a jacket note, "introduced" him to the Brazilian public.
By 1973, Bosco went off to Rio where he found high interest in his work from other musicians and record companies. Soon the young Mineiro -- who by this time actually had a degree in Civil Engineering -- became part of the musical mainstream. In those days of dictatorship in Brazil that could mean a plunge into very hot water.
Despite the danger, Bosco wrote, "O Bêbado e o Equilibrista" (The Drunkard and the Equilibrist), his own personal attempt to "bring the morning." With lyrics by Aldir Blanc, a frequent collaborator and hauntingly performed by Elis Regina, another frequent collaborator, "O Bêbado e o Equilibrista" became a musical symbol of the struggle against the dictatorship and Amnesty International's theme song. To Bosco the song "shows anger and indignation towards things we felt were wrong."
In 1983, Bosco made a major impact on the jazz scene at the Montreux Festival in Switzerland not only by how he played but with what he played. He was one of the first artists to bring Brazilian music onto the performing stages of the world.
All through his musical career, Bosco has been seeking ways to fulfill his musical curiosity, test his talent, find new dimensions for his composing, his playing and his performance. Jazz is only one influence on his work, which is shot through also with Brazilian, African and Cuban elements, his family's Moorish background, his father's love of samba and even the church music of his Ponte Nova boyhood.
The particular "spin" that this Brazilian musical "great" puts on the works of other Brazilian musical "greats" is what makes Dá Licença Meu Senhor so compelling -- and so entertaining. Describing how his presentation differs from the originals, Bosco says, simply, that he "moves towards the light." Towards morning.
On Saturday evening, September 14th, Bosco will perform his new concert at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco where, three years ago, he made his California debut to high praise and packed houses. His earlier concert at the Herbst consisted almost entirely of his own compositions. But in Dá Licença Meu Senhor he will have a gifted trio of outstanding musicians on stage with him -- Jamil Joanes on bass, Alexandre Carvalho on guitar and Wigdor Santiago on flute/saxophone.
On stage with him also, will be the unseen presence of many outstanding Brazilian performers, composers, lyricists, even arrangers present and past, living and dead. Among them are Villa-Lobos, Tom Jobim, gone too soon, Dorival Caymmi, Ary Barroso, Noel Rosa, who virtually invented the modern samba, Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso.
