/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/CULTURE-BRAZIL: Capoeira, a Martial Art-cum- Dance ‘For Export’

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 28 2001 (IPS) - Capoeira, a mix of martial art and dance created by the African slaves brought to Brazil more than 300 years ago, has become an exhibition sport that is practiced around the world.

This global diffusion was evident when some 3,000 ‘capoeiristas’ from 23 countries converged on Rio de Janeiro last week for a gathering promoted by Abadá Capoeira, a non-profit association that promotes the practice and culture related to this “sport- art”.

Delegations came from Europe, Africa and Japan, with the largest contingent coming from the United States, according to Vitor García, capoeirista and spokesman for the Abadá central office in Rio.

Capoeira originally developed as a form of personal defence practiced by the slaves, in which legs and arms serve as points of support as well as for kicking and hitting. The head, elbows, knees are all used as weapons.

Mobility and agility are key elements for surprise attacks and for avoiding blows, giving the arc of a blow wide berth because, historically, capoeira was a dangerous, confrontational fight in which fugitive slaves defended themselves against slave hunters bearing knives or guns.

“The capoeirista pulls the floor out from under his rival, not letting him stand, nor letting him fall, but keeping him somehow aloft,” wrote one European about his travels in Brazil, enraptured by the fights he saw in Rio’s ‘favelas’ (slum neighbourhoods) in the 1960s.

It is widely held that slaves coming from Angola – another former Portuguese territory – introduced capoeira to this South American country.

Nevertheless, the members of Abadá and of other capoeira organisations treat it as a Brazilian creation with roots found in some African dances and games. Its development as a form of fighting grew out of the fugitive slaves’ need to defend themselves using only the body, because they rarely possessed weapons.

The name itself is not of African origins, but rather comes from Tupi, a Brazilian indigenous language. Capoeira is a term also used in Brazil to refer to a deforested area, or to the secondary vegetation that grows to replace the original forest.

García told IPS about how Abadá began in 1995 to teach capoeira courses in Angola, and now has 200 students there.

The association also promotes the martial art-dance in more than 20 countries, and one of its founders, Edvaldo Carneiro e Silva, now lives in Austria, where he coordinates the European branch of this global movement.

Brazilian teachers of capoeira can be found just about everywhere, but Germany has turned into the European leader as far as the practice of this sport, despite the fact that it is relatively new, arriving there in the 1980s. An informal survey conducted late last year indicates that capoeira courses are now taught in 45 German cities.

Similar diffusion is evident in France and Italy, where it is fomented by Brazilian capoeira teachers with students including local citizens as well as immigrants from Africa and from other regions.

“It is a manifestation of multi-cultural integration, ” states Paulo Siqueira, one of the first Brazilian instructors to teach capoeira classes in Germany.

Capoeira was recognised as a sport in 1972 after a long evolution as a martial art that extended from the slaves to the freed Afro- Brazilians, mestizos (mixed-race) and other sectors, generally poor and particularly in Brazil’s port cities, such as Salvador, Recife and Rio de Janeiro.

Capoeiristas played an important role in the origins of the Brazilian navy and in the war against Paraguay (1865-1870), says historian Carlos Eugenio Líbano Soares.

As a popular activity among sailors and the marginalized groups of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, for example, capoeira was long associated with crime, street violence and social turbulence.

Writers have described the characteristics of this “warrior dance” throughout the last three centuries. The most frequent move, a trick known as the “rabo-de-raia” (mantaray tail), is aimed at causing the enemy to lose his balance, briefly incapacitating him as the capoeirista makes his next move.

In its more pugnacious past, capoeira included some devastating blows, such as driving one’s head into the enemy’s belly or a head- blow to the rival’s temple, or kicks aimed at vital organs – moves that are potentially fatal. But some other styles that came about were meant specifically to make a laughingstock of the adversary, who was unable to keep up with the expert capoeirista’s movements, say historians.

But capoeira also developed as a dance, with movements simulating the blows and with rhythms marked by a traditional instrument, the ‘berimbau’, a bow with metal cord attached to a halved gourd, which emits two tones. The ‘pandero’ and other percussion instruments are also often added to the show.

The fight-dance has evolved from street competitions in poor neighbourhoods to an organised spectacle, with each “school” defined by its music and stylistic variations. The schools attract men and women alike, with the capoeiristas rising in the hierarchy based on their experience and abilities.

Abadá has been key in its dissemination as a sport and a spectacle, as it has 25,000 to 30,000 members throughout Brazil and abroad. The association’s founder and leader, José Tadeu Carneiro Cardoso, “capoeira master”, considers the sport-art an “expression of the oppressed people in search of liberty and dignity,” and of national identity.