João Bosco: O Canto da Terra por um Fio

Released just before the 2023 solstice (winter in the US, summer south of the Equator), Joao Bosco's stunning "O Canto da Terra por um Fio" (The Corner of the Earth by a Thread) adds a global call for godly and human intervention to the season's more traditional holiday fare. The piece is the first single of a project to be released in mid-2024. The lyric speaks of a great river that sees its life hanging by a thread, that feels suffocation in its gigantic veins. The rain, wind, sun and spirits of the forest call the name of Omama, founding deity of the Yanomami.

Bosco wrote the song wordlessly at first, singing specific non-semantic syllables with no translation. He then stepped back to see what he had created, finding it to be a song that comes, as he put it, from the ground, from the earth, from sweat, from clay, from fauna and flora, from a people singing in praise of what will come. He identified the context as Afro-Brazilian rhythmically and harmonically and began to discuss it at length with his musical partners on the project, his son, philosopher-journalist and lyricist Francisco Bosco, and cellist-arranger Jaques Morelenbaum, who is well known for his work with Antonio Carlos Jobim.

The three shared their frustration over a contemporary climate in which indigenous people like the Yanomami—who have been mythologized by writers, composers and poets—have witnessed their homelands engulfed in flames. The perspective they present is dystopian, but with hope that xapiris (forest spirits) might help in some way, that Brazil can (continue to) be influenced to discuss its problems through its popular music. This is precisely what Bosco, his longtime lyricist partner Aldir Blanc, and other celebrated members of the Música Popular Brasileira (MPB) movement of the 1970s and '80s—Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, among them—tried to do during the military regime.

The instrumentation is simple, consisting of guitar, voice and cello with sounds of river creatures interspersed. The music is stark and haunting, a minor melody over a hypnotic four-bar ostinato in triple time with descending bass for the verse, followed by a 22-bar release and a sing-along refrain with a chilling lyric, "a lava mata a mata daqui, arde tudo" (the lava kills the forest here, everything burns). Those wishing to raise their voices in song at a gathering this season can find the lyric sheet and guitar tabs on Bosco's web page, free of charge. (Check the YouTube at the bottom of the page.)