Capoeira is an art form hat involves movement, music, and elements of practical philosophy. One experiences the essence of capoeira by "playing" a physical game called jogo de capoeira (game of capoeira) or simply jogo. During this ritualized combat, two capoeiristas (players of capoeira) exchange movements of attack and defense in a constant flow while observing rituals and proper manners of the art. Both players attempt to control the space by confusing the opponent with feints and deceptive moves. During the jogo, the capoeiristas explore their strengths and weaknesses, fears and fatigue in a sometimes frustrating, but nevertheless enjoyable, challenging and constant process of personal expression, self-reflection and growth.
The speed and character of the jogo are generally determined by the many different rhythms of the berimbau, a one-string musical bow, which is considered to be the primary symbol of this art form. The berimbau is complemented by the pandeiro (tambourine), atabaque (single-headed standing drum), agogo (double bell), and reco-reco (grooved segment of bamboo scraped with a stick) to form a unique ensemble of instruments. Inspiring solos and collective singing in a call-and-response dialogue join the hypnotic percussion to complete the musical ambiance for the capoeira session. The session is called roda de capoeira, literally "capoeira wheel," or simply roda. The term roda, refers to the ring of participants that defines the physical space for the two capoeiristas engaged in the ritualized combat.
During the
Middle Ages, Portugal suffered a drastic decrease in its labor force as
a result of human loss in the war for independence from Castile, and from
a series of epidemics of devastating proportions. Moreover, a huge deployment
of people to Africa and India in Portugal's colonial endeavors intensified
the crisis (Pinsky1988: 14). Gomes Eannes de Azurara was one of the first
to register Portugal's incipient attempt to replace its productive hands,
narrating how Antáo Gonçalves in 1441 captured and took the first Africans
to the Infant D. Henrique, King of Portugal (in Rego 1968: 1-2). By the
early 1500s, Portugal had begun extensive human trafficking from Africa
to its South American colony of Brazil.
Between the
years of 1500 and 1888, almost four million souls crossed the Atlantic
in the disease-ridden slave ships of the Portuguese Crown. The signing
of the Queiroz Law prohibiting slave traffic in 1850 was not strong enough
to empty the sails of the tumbadoras (slave ships) crossing the ocean.
Many Africans were still forced to face the "middle passage" and were
smuggled into Brazil. The ethnocultural contributions of this massive
forced human migration, along with those of the Native inhabitants of
the colony and those of the Europeans from Portugal, shaped the people
and the culture of Brazil. From the
Africans, we inherited the essential elements of capoeira. This is evident
in the aesthetics of movement and musical structure of the art, in its
rituals and philosophical principles, as well as in historical accounts
of the ethnicity of those who practiced capoeira in the past. Most of the
questions related to the formative period of the art still remain unanswered.
When, how, and why did capoeira emerge in Brazil? From what specific cultural
groups did it come, and from which original art forms did it derive? The
difficulty in answering these questions resides in the lack of written
registers of capoeira and in the absence of an oral tradition that reaches
as far back as the pre-dawn of the art. Also, the unclear Europeans' notion
of cultural and geographic boundaries of the African territories at the
beginning of Portugal's colonial enterprises, as well as the mixing of
Africans from different tribes in the same work areas in Brazil, increase
our uncertainties. According
to E. Bradford Burns, it is possible to identify three major African contributors
to Brazilian society: the Yoruban and Dahomean Sudanese people originating
from regions that later became Liberia, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, and the
southern part of contemporary Benin (former Dahomey); the "Mohammedanized
Guinea-Sudanese" Hausa; and the Bantu people from Angola, Congo and Mozambique
(Burns 1970: 39). Early documents
about enslaved Africans in Brazil, however, refer only to "natives from
Guiné." At that time, "Guiné" was a generic denomination for a large area
of West Africa with no precise ethnic or politico-geographic definition
in the European mind. "[Guiné] extended from the delta of the Senegal
River limits of the desert region between Senegal and Mauritania to the
Orange River, in the contemporary Gabon ..." (Pinsky, 1988: 24). Kenny
Mann (1966), in his own description of the area, placed its boundaries
a bit further north, so as not to include the contemporary states of Cameroon,
Equatorial Guinea and the Island of Sáo Tomé. Such broad geographical
definitions have been insufficient and confusing for the investigator
looking into the ethnic history of capoeira. This lack of clarity was
felt even by the earliest chroniclers of the art. Plocido de Abreu stated
in his pioneer work Os capoeiras (1886), the difficulties he faced in
his attempt to trace the origins of the art form (Soares, 1994: 10). The importance
of Yoruban influences in the state of Bahia has long been recognized.
Recently, though, the weight of the Bantu contribution has been reevaluated,
gaining more prominence as traces of this culture are identified in the
way of life of the inhabitants of Bahia's old cities. Since the cadence
in the ginga (the multi-funcional and characteristic movement of capoeira
), the music, and the rituals of today's capoeira seem to have radiated
from the Reconcavo Baiano (coastal areas of the Bay of All Saints in Bahia),
it is not a far stretch of the imagination to associate the formative
elements of the art with cultural expressions embedded in the traditions
of the sub-Saharan Bantu people from Angola. In reality,
the historical journey of capoeira is as elusive to grasp as is the disconcerting
typical movement of a good capoeirista. We know for sure that the largest
cultural river that flooded Brazil ran from Africa, but the sources of
its tributaries are still hidden, and the specifics of its murmurs are
still like the riddles of an ancient sphinx yet to be deciphered.
Three main lines of thought concerning the origins of capoeira have been introduced throughout the times: capoeira was already formed in Africa; capoeira was created by Africans and their descendants in the rural areas of colonial Brazil; and capoeira was created by Africans and their descendants in one of the major Brazilian urban centers. Arguments supporting these theories have long been discussed.
One of the first theories proposing African origin for capoeira was put forward in 1889 by Beaurepaire-Rohan, who defined the art of capoeira as being a "kind of athletic game introduced by the Africans..." (in Soares, 1993: 20).
Much later, in 1960, the Portuguese Albano de Neves e Souza revisited
the African origins hypothesis, writing: "Among the Mucupe in Southern
Angola, there is a zebra dance, the n'golo, ... The n'golo is capoeira"
(In Moura, 1980: 15-16).
Kongo scholar
Dr. K. Kia Bunseki Fu-Kia introduced yet another possible African "ancestor"
of capoeira: "Kipura, in the Kongo cultural context, is ... an individual
whose techniques of fight or struggle are based or developed on the ground
of roosters fighting techniques ... (in Dawson, 1993).
For the last
three decades, theories of rural Brazilian origins of capoeira
have been popular among young fight-oriented capoeiristas. One
of these theories was promoted in detail by the professor of journalism
Augusto Ferreira, who emphasized the martial aspects of capoeira.
In what seems to be a rather creative description, he wrote in the Journal
of Capoeira (1968, vol2: 6) that capoeira was born out of a "burning
desire for freedom," developing its structure as a fight in the the quilombos,
back-country villages formed by runaway slaves.
Brasil Gerson
(n/d), in his book History of Rio de Janeiro's Streets, presented
a theory supporting the urban origins of capoeira. He stated that
in the street Rua da Praia de D. Manoel, there was a large bird market
where the slaves converged carrying their "capoeiras" (baskets)
of chickens on their heads. The game of capoeira, Gerson proposed,
"was born from the slaves' pastimes at this market" (Gerson, 3rd. Edition
p. 31).
This theory
was later accepted by the respected Brazilian linguist Antenor Nascentes
(n/d), while examining the etymology of the word capoeira. Nascentes
wrote: "The slaves who brought capoeiras of chickens to sell in
the market, while waiting for the market to open, would enjoy themselves
by playing the game of capoeira . As a metonymy res pro persona,
the name of the thing was passed on to the person related with it" (In
Rego 1968, pp. 24-25).
Waldeloir
Rego (1968), an African-Brazilian sociologist and expert in African culture
in the Americas, has written one of the most comprehensive and well-researched
books on capoeira. In his book, Capoeira Angola, Rego presented
his claim:
The existence
of capoeira in different parts of Brazil without apparent connection
suggested yet another proposition about the formation of a more unified
display of the art. This theory was presented by Nestor Capoeira in his
book Fundamentos da Malicia (1992):
Nestor Capoeira's
considerations were part of a complex and interesting discussion with
Muniz Sodré, professor of communications and a well versed scholar in
capoeira, candomblé (certain African-Brazilian religious ceremonies)
and other African cultural traditions. In this discussion, commenting
from the African cultural perspective, in which the ritual and the sacred
are present in everything, Muniz Sodré said:
The hypothesis
of 'unconscious' [would be] valid for the modern occidental society
which repressed the ritual, in the sense that it represses the mythical
manifestation of the world...However, something is hidden, and hides
itself through the secret, the secret that is controlled by the elders,
by the initiated. Therefore, repression does not exist, secret does.
If there is not repression, there is not the unconscious.
Capoeira
is the conjunction of cult, secret and fight...The secret is a dynamic
of communication, of the redistribution of axé [the force that moves
everything in the universe according to some African beliefs], of the
existence and vigor of the cosmic game...
In terms
of fight...it is not [only] the violence or the force of the weapons
that come into play (the war is just a small and episodic aspect of
the fight), but the tricks, the astuteness, the courage and the power
of realization (Axé) involved (Capoeira, 1992: 39-41). What then
is capoeira? Is it African, and if so, what does it mean to be
African in this case? Capoeira has been an elusive "chameleonic"
art form that has assumed many shapes throughout its existence. Change,
however, has never been able to wring out the reflection of capoeira's
soul, or extirpate its formative seeds, the common denominator threading
together all the shapes capoeira has assumed. Capoeira's
spirit, its innate capacity to resist pressure through a deceptive strategy
of adaptability and "non-direct" confrontation of opposing forces, is
one of the essences that exudes from its African roots.
Julio Cezar
de Souza Tavares, one of the contemporary authors who revolutionized the
thinking on capoeira, referred to the art as the "war dance: archive
weapon" in his master's sociological thesis. Tavares introduced:
The comprehension
of one phenomenon that characterizes the manifestation of the wisdom
of the blacks, is the wisdom of the body. This knowledge constitutes
the nucleus, a body of configured attitudes, while [being] a strategy,
with the goal of edifying spaces where the socio-cultural identity would
be presented...
It is exactly
for being always treated as a body that exclusively incarnates work,
this side of the African culture reinforced itself to become strategically
structured with the goal of preserving and strengthening the body as
an instrument of cultural transmission of the socially acquired habits
(archive), and at the same time, as an instrument of organization of
the physical, individual, and community defense (weapon)... [In Brazil],
capoeira was chosen as an event that possesses this corporeal
knowledge. Of course, another kind of practice could have been chosen,
but [capoeira] was the one that better allocated itself according to
the binomial archive weapon (In Capoeira, 1992: 41-42). Capoeira
is not the only popular expression that derives from the same formative
elements. African in essence, these elements are present in other African
rooted art forms, such as the dancesmani from Cuba and laghya
from Martinique, or in other purely African cultural expressions, such
as the ceremonial dance n'golo from Angola. In many ways, these
arts resemble capoeira. However, common structural elements that
are coalesced in different geographic and cultural environments result
in different outcomes. In spite of capoeira's mutant, broad and
diffuse contours that may obfuscate those who are not experienced enough
to understand the art's complexities and contradictions, capoeira
is a well-known popular cultural expression that has been practiced in
Brazil for centuries. As the venerable capoeira teacher Mestre Pastinha
said: "Capoeira is capoeira...is capoeira...is capoeira"
(Pastinha, n/d).
My
thesis is that capoeira was created in Brazil, with a series of
movements and rhythms common to all of those who practice it...[C]oncerned
with capoeira's improvement, its own inventors and descendants changed
it with the introduction of new movements and toques [rhythms of the berimbau]
transforming some and extinguishing others... [This process occurred]
over time and in conjunction with the social and economic development
of the community that practiced capoeira, thus relegating many of [the
movements and rhythms] to the realm of the forgotten (Rego, 1968: 35).
Based
upon what we have seen up to this point, I am going to propose the thesis
that the fights, the dances, rhythms and musical instruments from different
African ethnicities did not fuse to 'escape prohibitions and to deceive
the white lords' but, this synthesis happened after 1830 in accordance
with a general tendency of the black community, in which, the armed fight,
impossible to be won, was substituted by the conquering of space and territory
through culture. And, that the jogo de capoeira did not have an exclusive
center of dispersion, but sprouted spontaneously in different formats
and in various locations materializing in Brazil between 1830 and 1930,
a certain archetype existent within the black collective unconscious (Capoeira,
pp. 40).
Capoeira
has undergone many changes throughout the times. For the purpose of this
paper, the different forms of capoeira documented through oral tradition
and written accounts, which thrived through the end of the nineteenth
century, are grouped under the label Pre-Republican Capoeira. These manifestations
of the art were called vadiação (a term with various meanings related
to playing around, doing nothing), malandragem (implied in the
activity of bums, deceitfulness, street smarts, cunning), capoeiragem,
or simply, capoeira.
Common to
the different manifestations of capoeira until recent years was the constant
attention the art received from the social mechanisms of repression, such
as the Secretaria de Polícia (Police Secretary) from Rio de Janeiro
in the early 1800s, and the Guarda Real de Polícia (Royal Guard
of Police), which was created in 1809 in the same city.
According
to police reports and the majority of history registers, capoeiristas
would spend their time involved in criminal activities, disturbing members
of the established society. Some chronicles penned by prominent writers
were more sympathetic to the capoeiristas. Many of these chroniclers emphasized
the ideal of "recuperating" capoeira from the status of a legal crime
to an accepted "national form of combat" (Soares, 1993 p.8). However,
these visionary ideals for nineteenth-century Brazil did not blossom.
At the end of the century, capoeira continued to be a weapon of survival
for slaves, free blacks, vagrants, and even jobless Europeans lost in
Brazil.
In Rio de
Janeiro and Recife capoeiristas would ally themselves in groups called
maltas, which were usually identified according to their neighborhoods.
During religious festivities and political rallies, the most notorious
maltas would confront each other in bloody combat, which caused great
concern for the general population.
In Bahia,
these associations were not as common, perhaps because the capoeira from
different regions in Brazil were subject to different influences. Great
numbers of written accounts about capoeira in Rio de Janeiro, for instance,
reveal an art form that seems to have received European cultural influences.
Waldemar Oliveira (1970) wrote that the well-regarded historian Melo de
Morais Filho in the late 1700's associated the capoeira style from Rio
de Janeiro at the time with various athletic exercises, including the
French boxing savate, the Portuguese jogo de pau (stick
fight), rowing, and English boxing (Oliveira, 1970:74).
It is difficult
to see any relationship between capoeira as we know it today and rowing,
or between capoeira and English boxing. However, when comparing drawings
depicting capoeiristas from Rio de Janeiro in the late 1800s with drawings
of savate stemming from the same epoch, it is indeed difficult to differentiate
the two practices. The capoeira drawings of Kalixto Cordeiro in 1906 (in
Moura 1985: 88-91), the drawings of savate in Charlemont's book of 1877
(fig. 45-47: 65), the well-known photos of the famous capoeirista Cir’aco
da Silva in a 1909 issue of the magazine Careta (in Moura 1991: 35), and
the photos in the Delahay's 1991 book of savate and chausson (36, bottom)
all render the two art forms virtually indistinguishable.
In 1889,
one year after the signing of the "Golden Law" by Princess Isabel that
marked the official end of slavery, a major transformation shook the political
structure of Brazil. After almost one century of being an unsuccessful
monarchy, Brazil became a Republic. The change in government caused dramatic
consequences to the lives of capoeiristas in major urban centers.
The Brazilian Empire lasted sixty-seven years, from 1822 to 1889. In its last days, conflicts between Republicans and Monarchists occurred frequently. The streets of Rio de Janeiro, were the stage of actual battles that frightened the general population. In order to protect Princess Isabel, the Monarchists created the Guarda Negra (Black Guard) composed of blacks, mulattos, and many freed slaves. These men were extremely devoted to the Princess because she had signed the law abolishing slavery. The Guarda Negra battled Republicans until the last spark of [the] empire's life had died out. Furious, Republicans swore to kill its members as if they were "killing dogs." If the Monarchy could not extinguish Capoeira, the newly established Republic was going to try (Almeida, 1986: 28).
© 1996 Ubirajara G. Almeida
Illustration by Sherry Melinkoff