“Capoeira is a fight for dancers and a dance for fighters. It is a duel between pals. It is a game, a dance, a fight, a perfect mixture of strength and rhythm, poetry and agility. Music and singing rule the movements. Force leaves its place to rhythm. Violence submits to melody. It goes beyond antagonisms.”

Origins

Capoeira’s origins are widely disputed. There are many who disagree on whether it arrived with enslaved Africans or whether Africans created it once they reached Brazil.

MULTIPLE THEORIES

It must be stressed that there are many other theories attempting to explain the origins of Capoeira.

1. According to one prevalent theory, Capoeira was a fight that was disguised as a dance so that it could be practiced unbeknownst to the white slave owners. This seems unlikely because, around 1814, when African culture began to be repressed, other forms of African dancing suffered prohibition along with Capoeira, so there was no sense in disguising Capoeira as a dance.
2. Another theory says that the Mucupes in the South of Angola had an initiation ritual (efundula) for when girls became woman, on which occasion the young warriors engaged in the N’golo, or “dance of the zebras,” a warrior’s fight-dance. According to this theory, the N’golo was Capoeira itself. This theory was presented by Camara Cascudo (folclore do Brasil, 1967), but one year later Waldeloir Rego (Capoeira Angola, Editora Itapoan, Salvador, 1968) warned that this “strange theory” should be looked upon with reserve until it was properly proven (something that never happened). If the N’Golo did exist, it would seem that it was at best one of several dances that contributed to the creation of early Capoeira.
3. Other theories mix Zumbi, the legendary leader of the Quilombo dos Palmares (a community made up of those who managed to flee from slavery) with the origins of Capoeira, without any reliable information on the matter. All of these theories are extremely important when we try to understand the myth that surrounds Capoeira, but they clearly cannot be accepted as historical fact according to the data and information that we presently have.

THE BEGINNING

In 1500’s the Portuguese, led by explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral, arrived in Brazil. One of the first measures taken by the new arrivals was the subjugation of the local population, the Brazilian Indians, in order to furnish the Portuguese with slave labour for sugarcane and cotton. The experience with the aborigines was a failure. The Indians quickly died in captivity or fled to their nearby homes. The Portuguese then began to import slave labour from Africa. On the other side of the Atlantic, free men and women were captured, loaded onto ghastly slave ships and sent on nightmarish voyages that for most would end in perpetual bondage. The Africans first arrived by the hundreds and later by the thousands (approximately four million in total).Three major African groups contributed in large numbers to the slave population in Brazil, the Sudanese group, composed largely of Yoruba and Dahomean peoples, the Mohammedanized Guinea-Sudanese groups of Malesian and Hausa peoples, and the “Bantu” groups (among them Kongos, Kimbundas, and Kasanjes) from Angola, Congo and Mozambique.

THE FOREFATHERS

Who or what is responsible for Capoeira? Where did the foundation of capoeira come from? That is the eternal question that can never really be answered. The Bantu groups are believed to have been the foundation for the birth of Capoeira. They brought with them, from Africa, their culture, a culture that was not stored away in books and museums but rather in the body, mind, heart and soul. A culture that was transmitted from father to son, throughout generations. There was candomble’, a religion; the berimbau, a musical instrument; vatapa, a food; and so many other things. Basically a way of life.

This style of fighting form disguised as dance has always been based on the principle of surprise and improvisation. On the numerous plantations of the Brazilian countryside, enslaved Africans practiced and used these methods to combat the malicious behaviour often meted out by overseers, their crews and the slave owners. Its practitioners were able to create such force through their movements and surprise tactics that it was not uncommon for victims to be knocked out suddenly or die from it’s blows. Users of this martial art also placed razors between their toes or used knives to unmercifully deal with those who chose to cross their paths.

The slaves taking advantage of the opportunities, fled, plunging into the forests in search of places in which to hide and survive. Many after escaping founded independent villages called quilombos. The quilombos were very important to evolution of Capoeira. There were at least ten major quilombos with internal socio-economic organizations and commercial relationships with neighbouring cities. The quilombo dos Palmares lasted sixty-seven years in the interior of the state of Alagoas, rebuffing almost all expeditions sent to extinguish it. Because of the consistency and type of threat present, Capoeira developed it’s structure as a fight in the quilombos. The embryo of Capoeira as a rudimentary fighting style was created in the slaves’ quarters and perhaps would not have developed further if left only to that environment. TheMaroons, Africans who escaped slavery and allied with the natives, were notorious for using Capoeira against hunters, trackers and soldiers who were attempting to return them to a state of slavery. Survivors of ambushes with Maroons that involved hand-to-hand combat described scenes of mayhem, stating that the Maroons appeared from nowhere striking them with blows from angles that they could not fathom. It was not uncommon to hear of these enslavers turning tails to the wind in an attempt to escape these vicious attacks. On the numerous plantations of the Brazilian countryside, enslaved Africans practiced and used these methods to combat the malicious behaviour often meted out by overseers, their crews and the slave owners. Its practitioners were able to create such force through their movements and surprise tactics that it was not uncommon for victims to be knocked out suddenly or die from it’s blows. Users of this martial art also placed razors between their toes or used knives to unmercifully deal with those who chose to cross their paths.

The slaves had been taken from their land, but their culture and desire for freedom could not be taken away.

Prohibition

“In Capoeira the opponents are not enemies, they are comrades. They don’t fight, they pretend to fight. In a very ingenuous way they try to give an artistic view of combat. Above the spirit of competition there is a sense of beauty.

The Capoeira player is an artist and an athlete, a player and a poet.”

- Dias Gomes, 1960

Capoeira has evolved directly as part of the Brazilian culture and history. From the Quilombos to the streets of Salvador, Pernambuco, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, Capoeira thrived as an expression of life and resistance.

SUPPRESSION

Starting around 1814, Capoeira and other forms of African cultural expression suffered repression and were prohibited in some places by the slave masters and overseers. Up until that date, forms of African cultural expression were permitted and sometimes even encouraged, not only as a safety gauge against internal pressures created by slavery but also to bring out the differences between various African groups, in a spirit of “divide and conquer”. But with the arrival in Brazil in 1808 of the Portuguese king Dom Joao VI and his court, who were fleeing Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Portugal, things changed. The newcomers understood the necessity of destroying a people’s culture in order to dominate them, and Capoeira began to be persecuted in a process, which would culminate with its being outlawed in 1892. Why was Capoeira suppressed? There were many motives. First of all it gave Africans a sense of nationality. It also developed self-confidence in individual Capoeira practitioners. Capoeira created small, cohesive groups. It also created dangerous and agile fighters. Sometimes the slaves would injure themselves during the Capoeira, which was not desirable from an economical point of view. The masters and overseers were probably not as conscious as the king and his intellectuals of his court of all of these motives, but intuitively knew something didn’t “smell right.”

Despite restrictions, the official ban of Capoeira could not last and the will of the people defeated the will of the state. And without such restrictions the martial art of Capoeira has evolved into the form which is practiced today. Elements of the dance and martial art have both survived to create an experience which is both mesmerizing as well as instructive.

The Brazilian government prohibited its practice until the 1930s when Mestre Bimba transformed it into a ruled sport and brought it in gyms. By 1974 the first Capoeira Federation.

THE TURNING POINT

With the signing of the Golden Law in 1888, which abolished slavery, the newly freed slaves did not find a place for themselves within the existing socio-economic order. The capoeirista (practitioner of Capoeira), with his fighting skills, self-confidence and individuality, quickly descended into criminality and Capoeira along with him. In Rio de Janiero, where Capoeira had developed exclusively as a form of fighting, criminal gangs were created that terrorized the population. Soon thereafter, during the transition from the Brazilian Empire to the Brazilian republic in 1890, these gangs were used by both monarchists and republicans to exert pressure on and break up the rallies of their adversaries. The club, the dagger and the switchblade were used to complement the damage done by various Capoeira moves.In Bahia on the other hand, Capoeira continued to develop into a ritual-dance-fight-game, and the berimbau began to be an indispensable instrument used to command the rodas (actual sessions of Capoeira games), which always took place hidden locales since the practice of Capoeira in this era had already been outlawed by the first constitution of the Brazilian Republic (1892).

PERSECUTION

Capoeira was always marginalized and made the victim of prejudice; the governments have done a thousand things since the colonial era. Capoeira has appeared as a crime of vagrancy in the Brazilian Penal Code, and people have been sent to the penal colony on the island of Fernando de Noronha for being capoeiristas. The Paraguayan war is another example: capoeiristas were sent to the front lines of battle in order to be exterminated – they formed the ‘barefoot platoon.’

Mestre Moraes
At the beginning of the twentieth century, in Rio the capoeirista was a rouge and a criminal. Whether the capoeirista was white, black or mulatto, he was an expert in the use of kicks (golpes), sweeps (rasteiras) and head-butts (cabecadas), as well as in the use of blade weapons. In Recife, Capoeira became associated with the city’s principal musicbands. During carnival time, tough Capoeira fighters would lead the bands through the streets of that city, and were ever two bands would meet, fighting and bloodshed would usually ensue. In Bahia, the capoeirista was also often seen as a criminal. The persecution and the confrontations with the police continued. The art form was slowly extinguished in Rio and Recife, leaving Capoeira only in Bahia. It was during this period that legendary figures, feared players such as Besouro Cordao-de-Ouro in Bahia, Nascimento Grande in Recife and Manduca da Praia in Rio, who are celebrated to this day in Capoeira, made their appearances It is said that Besouro lived in Santo Amaro da Purificacao in the state of Bahia, and was the teacher of another famous capoeirista by the name of Cobrinha Verde. Besouro did not like the police and was feared not only as a capoeirista but also for having his corpo fechado (a person who through specific magic rituals, supposedly attains almost complete invulnerability in the face of various weapons). According to legend, an ambush was set up for him. It is said that he himself (who could not read) carried the written message identifying him as the person to be killed, thinking that it was a message that would bring him work. Legend says he was killed with a special wooden dagger prepared during magic rituals in order to overcome his corpo fechado.

TODAY AND BEYOND

Capoeira has grown tremendously over the last fifty years. It has finally been excepted by the masses in Brazil. Capoeira competitions and academies are surfacing everywhere. In 1974 it was recognized as the national sport of Brazil. This forced the creation of a national federation of Capoeira. It was formed to govern, promote and coordinate Capoeira since no effort was made previously to unite the various emergences of Capoeira throughout Brazil. Capoeira has expanded beyond the borders of Brazil and is growing rapidly all over the world. Capoeira appeals to many for many different reasons. First of all the pure beauty of the art is hypnotic. Capoeira is a dance and a fight. It’s not only a combination of gymnastics, dance and martial arts but also music, culture, history and knowledge. The capoeirista must learn to balance the physical with the mental, he must play many instruments and sing. The capoeirista is a historian. The capoeirista is all of these

The game

Capoeira, unlike other martial arts, can be more accurately described as a game. Capoeira was and is composed of cat like movements where participants collapse to the ground, use cartwheels, flips, handstands and many other deceptive movements to avoid strikes and injury by opponents. A lot of the kicks and some movements done in Capoeira can be seen in other arts, but the difference is the delivery.

The name of the capoeira game is jogo. The jogo is played by two capoeira practitioners (capoeiristas) at a time, inside a ring of people called roda, which is composed of other capoeiristas and/or onlookers. The capoeiristas engage in a series of attack and counter attack movements. Player or not you are expected to give energy to the roda by clapping and singing in response to the person “in charge” of the roda. As one contestants leaves the circle another immediately takes his place. This interaction between the group continues until the group decides to disband.

Music plays a deeply important role in the capoeira game. The main instrument, the berimbau, sets the pace for the jogo, and the capoeira players must follow accordingly. If the berimbau player chooses a fast paced rhythm, the capoeiristas play fast, throwing rapid kicks and flips; if he plays a slow rhythm the player slow down, focusing more trickery and control. Two other core instruments (more can be brought in depending on the style) accompany the berimbau: the pandeiro (tambourine) and the atabaque (drum).  Along with these instruments, participants in the capoeira roda sing songs in Portuguese while clapping to the beat.

We believe that Capoeira’s role in the evolution of martial arts should not be ignored, forgotten or denied. The bravery of its practitioners in the past to protect their freedom and in the present to maintain their traditions is a testament to the fact that true greatness can be suppressed but never destroyed.