João Bosco turns 80 this Monday, July 13th Victor Correa / Disclosure ? ANALYSIS ? João Bosco turns 80 today as a majestic and solitary baobab tree based on the fertile soil in which the music labeled as MPB grows. A native of Ponte Nova (MG), born on July 13, 1946, João Bosco de Freitas Mucci became an octogenarian with prestige and musicality at an all-time high. The guitar friend, translator of the artist's astonishing musicality, follows Bosco's side. It is inside the shell of this guitar that the musically buzzing head of a genius singer, composer and instrumentalist lives, owner of a private universe, unreachable to those on the outside. From the guitar, Bosco extrapolates the nation where the cuíca growls with hunger and glimpses a world that, from Geraes, transports him to the sound of the Arabian – were it not for him being the son of a Lebanese father – with permanent stops in Rio de Janeiro (RJ) of samba and bossa nova (which is also samba...), in the Caribbean of boleros of falsely brilliant passions and in Africa that gave birth to world music and, by extension, the singer from Rio de Janeiro Clementina de Jesus (1901 – 1987). All of this is in João Bosco's songbook, amalgamated with the influence of jazz, which is most noticeable in the improvisations of the shows and especially in the albums recorded with European orchestras, such as the recent “Horda” (2026), released on July 3rd. The paths taken by João Bosco were unusual, like the architecture of “Agnus sei”, a song that introduced the artist to Brazil in 1972. Before, in prehistory, Bosco had signed a partnership in 1967 in his hometown of Ouro Preto (MG) with the already established Vinicius de Moraes (1913 – 1980), a bossa poet who also impacted Bosco in 1958 on the revolutionary guitar of another João. Youth sambas composed by Bosco and written by Vinicius remain as merely curious titles of a songbook that gained importance following the defining encounter between the Minas Gerais native and the Rio bard Aldir Blanc (September 2, 1946 – May 4, 2020), a lyricist with a unique syntax in MPB who would also have become an octogenarian in 2026 if he hadn't left the scene six years ago. With Aldir's precise and surprising verses, Bosco's music became the acute chronicle of the social ills of urban Brazil in the 1970s. Aldir placed João facing the crime committed on the street corners, but without losing his tenderness in the face of the harshness of life of the legion of disinherited people from the suburbs of the country portrayed by the duo from the window into Rio's everyday life. An up-to-date singer, Elis Regina (1945 – 1982) soon caught the signs of the partnership's inventiveness and became the duo's interpreter without canceling João Bosco's singing, finally embraced by the people from the second album, “Caça à fox” (1975), which was followed by bombshells such as the albums “Galos de briga” (1976), “Tiro de mercy” (1977), “Linha de passe” (1980), “Bandalism” (1980), “That's your life” (1981) and “Commission from the front” (1982), all based on the symbiosis of Bosco and the bard. The partnership with Aldir Blanc dissolved in the mid-1980s. Later, after Bosco established occasional partnerships with José Carlos Capinan (lyricist of “Papel machê”, a hit song from 1984 that was inspired by the sculptures of Ângela Bosco, Bosco's music muse), Waly Salomão (1943 – 2003) and Antonio Cicero (1945 – 2024), the composer found in his son Francisco Bosco the partner with whom he refined and expanded his songbook. which, like all MPB, was relegated to market niches, losing its former popularity by maintaining refinement that reduces the number of listeners in a nation today more refractory to any music that rejects the harmonically simplistic structure of mainstream pop. With Francisco Bosco, João created a work that, in a short time, reached the same poetic stature as Aldir Blanc's partnership, but without the reach of the songs of the 1970s and 1980s due to the aforementioned marketing issues. An artist who knows how to interact with an orchestra, but who only uses the guitar, an instrument that when he plays it acquires the status of an orchestra, João Bosco remains firm as the solitary baobab tree in the sandy terrain of 21st century Brazilian music, always guided by the sometimes percussive guitar – an instrument that gives him the means to exercise and expose the sophistication of music made in a zone without borders – in tune with the onomatopoeic singing, the gagabirô that echoes freely like jazz. In the current 21st century, João Bosco has offered pearls to the few, but few who are also many in a nation of continental dimension like Brazil, a fertile land that supports this noble isolated baobab tree (but in communion with new and old friends, like those gathered in the album of duets that he will release in two parts throughout this semester). A baobab tree that feeds on the nutritious bark of a guitar that opens the doors of perception to the music of the world.