Bosco was born in 1930 at Bunkeya, a village near Likasi (then called Jadotville), Haut-Katanga District in then Belgian Congo, but lived most of his life in Lubumbashi, where in addition to playing music he had a job in a bank and with the local mining company, managed other bands, and owned a hotel on the Zambian border.
Born in Jadotville (now Likasi) in the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), he moved to Brussels, Belgium with his parents when he was ten years old, and went to school in Jodoigne.