Capoeira sou eu! Capoeira I am!

A poetic context of Africa and slavery is complemented by a more recent and literal history of market, dock and farm workers. Considering Habermas’ notion of communicative rationality, Miller argues that, “Common understandings arrived at consensually provide the basis for a morally valued way of life and the construction of collective identities that transcend the individual” (Miller 1992, 29). This blog will be looking at capoeira identities that derive from common understandings.

Menino, quem foi seu mestre? Kid, who’s your mestre?

Capoeira preserves few names before the 20^th century, and those that survive have quasi-mythical status. From the early 1930s onwards, capoeira was taken from the street to the Academy. This allowed for more formalised histories and hierarchies within groups and mestres are celebrated in song, among them Bimba, Pastinha, Waldemar and João Grande.

Preserving names in this way is consistent with an oral history. It also cements the significance of the mestre and the importance of descent. The question ‘kid, who was your mestre’ (related in songs) presents the status of a capoeirista as the child of a history and is the first question that is asked of anyone visiting an academy. The figure of the mestre is mixed in with family line: there is a strong notion of being ‘son’ or ‘grandson’ of – invariably male – lineages. The ladainha ‘Tradition’ includes the assertion, “Whoever has no father or mestre also has no tradition” (CD GCAP 3).

The notion of ancestry is reinforced by rituals that are performed in various ways: some academies honour the birthdays of past mestres, some have ‘baptisms’, some include in this the use of capoeira names – apelidos. Baptisms establish identity within a capoeira family and in doing so ritually reclaim space from Catholic church, which forced slaves to be baptized, disorienting them from their familial roots.

There is also some ground seized from the state. Capoeira does not render a national identity. Foreigners can play capoeira and become accomplished without any aspiration to being Brazilian. Brazil is scarcely mentioned in capoeira: the geographic setting is Bahia – and the geographical parameters are set by the sea not the state. The identity derived from capoeira comes from Salvador, Bahia or Angola, not from Brazil.

Power is also reconfigured. A ladainha on Mestre Pastinha’s CD includes the lines, “If you want to learn, come to Salvador and get in touch with Mestre Pastinha, he is the best teacher.” Another song claims, “I’ve never seen anyone better than Mr Bimba!” Within the group, the authority of the mestre is unquestioned and there is an associated responsibility in the guidance given within a relationship of confidence. The generation of status and respect that are distinct from and – formerly – contrary to the state establishes a community and source of support that shifts the distribution of power.

Angola & Regional

In discussing identity, some consideration is needed of the two major strands of capoeira. The ‘Regional Fight of Bahia’ known as Capoeira Regional was established by Mestre Bimba’s academy in 1932 and brought the combative elements to the fore. Around the same time, Mestre Pastinha opened an academy for ‘Capoeira Angola,’ placing greater store by the African roots and ritual elements of the game.

Filhos de Bimba, heirs of M Bimba

There are significant differences between the two schools in the music, games, values and histories. Angola and Regional function as concurrent universes of capoeira, with scarcely any acknowledgement of each other. ‘Contemporary capoeira’ is influenced by both schools and cites both styles or both founding fathers in its songs. I have come across only one reference in Capoeira Angola to Capoeira Regional. The song, ‘Tudo é diferente na Angola’/‘Everything is different in Angola’ seems to be an implicit comparison to Regional: the details are, ‘the viola responds to the gunga (referring to the conventions of interaction between the berimbaus); the berimbau is tuned; the game is low.’ (I don’t think it’s talking about the country).



GCAP - heirs of M Pastinha



Few capoeiristas are born into their capoeira line. Most choose their group and identities are constructed through the conventions and values of the group: the sway of the ginga (the core capoeira movement), the composition of the batería, Angoleiros wear yellow and black and train in hat and shoes, Regional schools have various colours but no shoes or hat. Regional schools have coloured belts to indicate level; Angoleiros ask how many years of training you have. Regional players enter the roda with exuberance; Angoleiros engage in ritual and then sneak in warily. I am not making an exhaustive comparison of the two schools, merely indicating some of the many ways in which identities are reproduced within and across groups.

Both the Regional and the Angolan branches of capoeira have universalising discourses: Regional popularised capoeira, for the first time training whites and people from the middle class, and arguably saving capoeira from obscurity. Pastinha also insisted that anyone could learn – asserting ‘capoeira is for men, women and children’ – but was keen to save capoeira from popularisation. He was specifically inclusive: one of his ladainhas states that generals and doctors can learn – but they need to submit to capoeira’s conventions. It’s the difference between taking capoeira to the people and bringing the people to capoeira.

Self-presentation

“Capoeira is my name

Capoeira is in my blood

Capoeira is to live well” (CD GCAP 3/ FICA songbook p17)

Capoeiristas are descendents of a general and particular lineage and, through their participation in orality and tradition, they become part of it. By joining a group they become integrated into its history and assume various duties of commitment and behaviour. They are responsible for the t-shirt they wear; when visiting other academies they are implicitly representing their group and their mestre.

Capoeira draws on – and feeds into – community (maintained by common exclamations ‘vamos vadiar’, ‘vamos embora’ – let’s play capoeira), but it is not a team sport. The realization of ancestry and training is the game that takes place in the roda, and that is about the individual and what he or she can do. Capoeira is not simply about presentation of history or the representation of a group or its conventions. Ultimately it is about self-presentation: how the capoeirista interacts with conventions, tests them and extends them through improvisation, creativity and expression. ‘Capoeira sou eu!’ It is personal – it is never ‘we are,’ it is always ‘I am!’

‘I have no superior, I am the son of freedom.

I’m not recounting my life, because there’s no need.

I am not on the run, and you are not the authority” (CD Mestre Canjiquinha e Waldemar/ FICA songbook p9)

References:

Miller, B. (1992). "Collective action and rational choice. Place, community and the limits to individual self-interest." Economic Geography 68(1): 22-42.

Soldier, Sailor

Africa, as a continent, but more as a concept, ideal or set of values, gives the context for capoeira. There is a more recent history that is also communicated through the songs and movements of capoeira. This is a history of heroic capoeiristas and their – often military – exploits, and of ordinary capoeiristas and their daily lives.

From Africa, with sunshine!

I got back to Salvador from Kilombo Tenonde and found a postcard from a friend in Madagascar! It took a month to arrive and seems to be evidence of a big world out there!



Warriors

There are a few songs in capoeira that are traced to military battles. Paranaé – perhaps the most widely sung capoeira song – references the involvement of slaves in the war against Paraguay (1865-70) in which many capoeiristas were enlisted.



The participation of capoeiristas in historic battles places them central to the history of Brazil – and as a function of their martial art, which was illegal at the time. This was also a moment of liberation: capoeirstas were promised freedom on the misplaced assumption that they would not survive the fighting. The song: “I won the battle of Camugerê,” also recalls a victory; in this case runaway slaves killed the slave master who was pursuing Aidê, an African enslaved woman. The recounting of these stories locates capoeira politically – in opposition to the state and slave masters. It also creates a heroic past in which capoeiristas’ exploits became decisive in their freedom from slavery.

There is a more radical critique of mainstream Brazilian history relayed by capoeira songs that debunk of the myth that slavery was abolished by the Golden Law of 1888. The argument is put succinctly in the ladainha ‘Dona Isabel, que historia e essa?’ (Madame Isabel, what history is this?). The ladainha offers an explicit counter-narrative: freedom was not given by Princess Isabel; it was Zumbi who fought for the true freedom, training heroes in the runaway settlement of Palmares. A similar line is given by the ladainha ‘Zumbi, King of Palmares,’ which begins, “history deceives us, telling us the opposite of what happened…” and elsewhere, sometimes mixed with the – contradictory – assertion that slavery has never been abolished.



Zumbi dos Palmares, statue in the Pelourinho, Salvador





Plaque by the statue

 





Workers

 

Vou vender coco, senha

A larger body of songs refers directly to the everyday lives of capoeiristas: not having the gravitas of the references to slavery or war, these more incidental histories tend to be rendered in the corridos, which are the simple songs that are sung during the roda and have a call-and-response structure. Market traders, cowboys, plantation workers, petty craftsment, dockers and sailors are represented in song. With the exception of ‘espora’ – ‘spur’, the names of moves are not derived from jobs. Cowboy songs also have direct reference to the game: ‘lasso, lasso, cowboy’ indicating the moment to strike. There is some sedimentation around the first half of the 20^th century. No one is working as a call centre or a petrochemicals factory.

There is a range of trades but they are all labouring jobs: there are no bureaucrats or property owning classes in capoeira songs. The jobs cited demand bodily strength, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes notes that people who have physical work are more likely to express themselves somatically (Scheper-Hughes 1992, 187). The shapes of the moves in capoeira are expansive and demonstrative of physical form: they are devised by labourers, not by people sitting at computers or driving cars.



women in the roda (from Alexandre Robatto’s 1954 film
‘Vadiação’; photos displayed in Forte de Santo Antonio)



Practically all capoeira songs present the male perspective, reflecting the predominantly male history of the game, a predominance that continues particularly in the upper echelons of the game. There are references to female Orixás and occasionally to their associated female saints. There is also a palpable female human presence: there are very few romantic love songs, but women appear in the everyday of life. There are women market traders, there are women’s names in songs ‘sai sai Caterina’ (leave, Caterina); ‘Dona Maria, como vai voce?’; (Maria, how are you?) ‘Dona Alice, nao me pega nao,’ (Alice, don’t get me) or more generally, ‘menina,’ ‘nega,’ ‘morena,’ or ‘mulher’ – terms addressing or referring to women.

Salvador-on-Sea

An important set of references is also made to Salvador, Bahia, the home of capoeira. There are a few mentions of Brazil (usually as the country that abolished – or didn’t – slavery), but the immediate geographical environment is frequently the subject of songs. You can literally (yes, literally) sing your way round Salvador: ‘Bahia de todos os santos’; ‘Good Jesus of Lapa!’ (an area of Salvador); ‘I’m going to Maré Island’; ‘If you want to see me, go to Piedade [Square] tomorrow’; ‘Adeus Santo Amaro’ (a town near Salvador).

Bom Jesus de Lapa-eh!

Sao Bento me chama

Saia do mar, marinheiro!

 



Bahia de Todos os Santos



The sea is also a constant presence in songs: as a source of fear and fish, as a vector for journeying and the source of sunken treasure, the preserve of the Orixá Yemanja, and as a feature of the city. It is also where the sting-ray lives, the ‘sting-ray’s tail’ – raba-de-arraia, being the name of a spinning kick. There is something very beautiful about playing in a roda by the beach singing, ‘Aprendi a jogar capoeira de Angola na beira do mar’ – ‘I learned to play capoeira Angola by the edge of the sea.’

The message

The perspective relayed through movement and songs is a workers’ perspective. There is not a strong class-consciousness or a unified political ideology, but there is a strong recognition of roots and social context.

References to Salvador and Bahia and the lives of extraordinary and ordinary people who live here sit within the broader context of Africa and slavery and provide local roots to capoeira. The relaying of experiences and familiar places establishes a bank of shared knowledge, experience and identity. Capoeiristas come from the street, are workers and – despite all the talk of travelling – really rather like Bahia (it’s lovely!).

References:

Scheper-Hughes, N. (1992). Death without weeping. The violence of everyday life in Brazil. Berkeley, Oxford, University of California Press.



´AFRICA´

You can find very similar instruments
 in the National museum in Kinshasa, Congo

The big news story is the waves. In the past week they have gone from being small and friendly to huge and very friendly. Apparently it’s now winter (it’s still extremely sunny!)

In this and the next few blogs, I’ll be presenting the knowledge that is transmitted through capoeira – the cognitive ends of the extralinguistic communication – and considering how it relates to communicative and instrumental rationality.



This blog will be looking at the references that are made to Africa and slavery, and that iteratively acknowledge these origins in capoeira and in Brazilian history. I put the word ‘Africa’ in inverted commas as the name does not refer to the continent in historical or geographical terms. Instead, a notion of ‘Africa’ is forged by capoeira that serves social and political functions.



According to the Afro-Brazilian Museum in Salvador, 4,507, 940 Africans arrived in Brazil as slaves from the beginning of Portuguese colonisation until 1851. Thousands more died en route. By way of comparison, a similar figure is put on the excess mortality rates in Congo during the wars from 1998-2002.



A double-headed agogo from Benin
 - in the Afro-Brazilian museum, Salvador



Off-shoots

 A ladainha from Mestre Pastinha’s CD includes the lines, “Capoeira came from Africa. It was the African who brought it” (CD Mestre Pastinha/ FICA songbook p6).

 

There are elements of capoeira that can be regarded as ‘off-shoots’ of Africa: the instruments, the roda, the call and response singing, the incantation of ‘Iê!’. Combat games were played in parts of central and southern Africa before colonisation.

 That there are elements of African culture is not contentious: until the 1930s, capoeira was played almost exclusively by people of African descent. Music was introduced probably around the beginning of the 20^th century, and as Brazilian social life was segregated, it is not surprising that African instruments were used.

Invocation

  

Oxum

 There are more explicit references to Africa: the frequent invocation of Orixás (the divinities of the West African pantheon), and the notion of a numerous family and common ancestry that they inspire. Some songs have words that are understood to be ‘African’: Nzambe (God in Lingala), Aruanda (a spiritual home in various sects and religions such as Umbanda, Quimbanda and Candomblé), Benguela (a Angolan port). There are colloquial references to race or skin colour – which is always black.

There are direct references to slavery in songs. The first ladainha I learnt in Salvador was ‘Saudade do grande mestre’ – which reflects on the experience of being enslaved and brought to Brazil. Giving a personal account – albeit poetic – it recalls to the misery and confusion of the slaves, rather than simply the physical hardship or the injustice. Corridos refer to captivity, slave-masters and their families, and plantation work.

 

Xangô  - Orixá of thunder and fire.

Xangô in capoeira is a backflip



There are also many songs and moves that refer to a natural environment – there are frequent references to the moon and the sun which, along with religious citations, summon a cosmic, rather than a human, order. A jungly context is given by ubiquitous mentions of forests and animals in the names of moves and in songs: monkeys, frogs, scorpions and various bird species.

Jungle cookies

In Guyana, you can buy jungle cookies. They don’t come form the jungle, though – they are baked in a factory but cut to look like jungle animals.

The Africa mix is compiled in Brazil. Orixás and agogos come from West Africa, berimbaus and atabaques (drums) come from central Africa. The pandeiro came with the Portuguese; practically all capoeira lyrics are Portuguese. And ‘Angola’ comes from Mestre Pastinha, the founding father of Capoeira Angola.



Berimbaus & pandeiro – (from Alexandre Robatto’s 1954 film ‘Vadiação’;
photos displayed in Forte de Santo Antonio



  

 People were brought for slave labour from Angola, but also Congo, and from West Africa – the Yoruba and Evê-Fon kingdoms. Angola is constantly invoked in Capoeira Angola songs; no other African countries are mentioned (the only exception I have come across is a corrido that relates: ‘I left Congo, I went to Angola!’). There is very occasional reference made to ‘Bantu’ which is commonly understood to include Congo and Angola, but comprises a much larger area.


What is more, slaves were brought from the interior and would not have national Angolan identity (not least because the territory was not fully established until after the end of slavery). Nor would they sing about Luanda, now the capital city, but then essentially a slave port. Slave identities would relate to kin or kingdom groups, and the lack of reference to these names is poignant: slavery disoriented heritage, and reference to broad and imposed identities, such as ‘Angolan’ preserves the dislocation of slavery rather than the more complex political reality from which people were brought.


Map showing slaving routes,
in the Afro-Brazilian museum in Salvador



Yansa



 





  

Exu

If we look at the jungle scenes, we find that they are not African – the animals are South American: there are jaguars in songs not lions, cutias (a South American chipmonk) not gibbons, caimans not crocodiles. Beija-flor – the hummingbird/ one-handed handstand – lives only in the Americas. ‘Macaco’ (or ‘macaque’ in French) has an offensive colonial legacy, particularly in Congo where the Belgians referred to uneducated ‘non-evolved’ Congolese as monkeys. ‘I stepped on a dry leaf and heard it crunch’ is a story about a runaway slave concerned that the noise made by the dry leaves will give him away.



Xango



Where is Africa?

The notion of African culture, words or ancestors provides a uniting discourse for a consciousness of slavery. References to Africa have communicative rationality in establishing a base and with it a lineage and capoeira community.

  

 

It´s difficult in the city

This non-literal concept of Africa performs social and political functions. It is the watchword for the motherland and black consciousness. Africa is the refuge, the home. Lacy talks of the ‘tame zones’ of security and modernity – oppositional to the ‘wild zones’. But the wild zones of the jungle are not threatening to all; Africa is the nurturing jungle where alternative norms, hierarchies and laws exist. In capoeira, Africa (or Angola) establishes a counterpoint to the tame zones of modernity. By reference to these origins, which legitimize and provide historical significance to capoeira, an alternative way of life is established through the processes of musical, lyrical and somatic communication.



Ossayin



Africa is not somewhere that has been left behind. It is the other side of the kalunga – the middle passage – that continues to exist in people’s identity, religious beliefs and artistic expressions. It is the other side of death, where the ancestors live and provide guidance and protection. It has a historical function in granting meaning and continuity. But its significance is also in a continued presence: this is what makes capoeiristas who they are. And Africa is the future too: frequently it is where capoeiristas are just off to ‘I’m going back to Angola’ – to play capoeira!

Orixas by Carybé, displayed in the Afro-Brazilian museum in Salvador 



Oxossi



References:

Lacy, M. J. (2003). Security and climate change : international relations and the limits of realism. London, Routledge.



 

 









  



No such thing as too much capoeira (life!)

“Dona Maria from Camboatá

She arrives at the market and bosses people around

She arrives at the roda and does a backward summersault”

This is my final ‘introductory’ blog. It’s to explore the relationship between capoeira and life as this has many dimensions and is relevant when considering the ways in which security has been distributed through capoeira. For those who play, capoeira is engrossing and taxing; but more than that – it becomes conceptually linked to practically all other elements of life.

It’s about time

Playing capoeira

Training takes a lot of time and cuts out various other things (meals, alcohol…). Rodas (games) in Salvador tend to take place on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays – so capoeira takes over your social life too. Capoeira makes you stronger, more flexible and fitter. It consumes parts of your brain, so when you’re not training, conversations turn to how to do things faster, slower, more beautifully, more tricksily. Lots of corridos (capoeira songs) are about the game or the instruments – ever decreasing circles!

This much is not unique to capoeira; many sporting or leisure activities develop absorbing communities, although capoeira’s range of skills – from acrobatics to ritual to musicality – is particularly demanding. The conceptual links, though, are more profound. As I write this blog, I am swiping at a mosquito. The mosquito retreats, flies round, makes another approach. It feels like capoeira. Capoeira affects your relationship with your body, with time, and with others. It is part of every other game, every other struggle and every other dance.

When considering the distribution of security, the use of tactics and strategy, the force of creativity and expression and the generation of identity are not boarded up inside the game or extracted from life and transposed to a playful setting. It is much more integrated than that. Capoeira maintains a duality – as a game and as a way of life – as is regularly acknowledged by capoeira teachers and in songs.

I have just caught the mosquito.

In his book, Ring of Liberation, Lowell Lewis discusses capoeira as reflection on life and escape from it, simultaneously a space for forgetting and for acknowledging.

Reflection on life

Come on in - the water´s lovely!

“Quem não sabe nadar vai ao fundo” “whoever doesn’t know how to swim sinks to the bottom”

Capoeira’s moves and music reflect on life and, to a large extent, on brutal aspects of life. Reflections on slavery are pervasive in the ladainhas (the long songs that are sung at the beginning of a roda), as are reflections on the fickleness of life and power and the need for deceit and trickery.

The movements of capoeira have violent elements, embodying not a role-play of oppression and liberation, but a somatic reflection on it. In line with Bourdieu’s law of the conservation of violence, the kicks are real, even though the context is ritualised. The movement establishes a somatic discourse. Faber writes, “The centrality of the body to ritual means that “ritualization” is a particularly mute form of activity. It is designed to do what it does without bringing what it is doing across the threshold of discourse or systematic thinking” (Faber 2004, 110). Capoeira repeats and repeats its references to violence and freedom without articulating experiences or opinions.

Escape from life

Capoeira is also an escape from life. It provides community, conventions, and hierarchies that, even if they are not completely safe, at least set customary parameters. According to Miller, “Common understandings arrived at consensually provide the basis for a morally valued way of life and the construction of collective identities that transcend the individual” (Miller 1992, 29). The roda is a place of camaraderie: people greet each other, sing together, respect the art, and end games with a hug.

Capoeira allows adepts to play around: they express, create and imagine – the words ‘jogar’, ‘brincar’ and ‘vadiar’ capture different elements of play. It is pursued with a kind of religious tenacity: in the 19^th century people risked being whipped or incarcerated for playing capoeira, but it did not stop them. Many songs talk of being ‘called’ to capoeira (and sometimes beaten or killed by it!). Sometimes it is the berimbau calling, sometimes Angola, sometimes Saint Bento – calling to play capoeira. There is also a freedom – of vagrancy and nomadism: songs state, ‘I’m off!’ – I’m going out to play capoeira, as if capoeira takes place a little apart from the usual cares of the world.

Escapism - only the blessed love cycling in Salvador

I’m already sick of living on the earth.

Oh, Mum, I’m going to the moon.

I told my wife and she replied,

“We’ll go if God is willing” 

(ladainha from CD Mestre Pastinha/ FICA songbook p6)

‘Jogar o jogo da vida’ – to play the game of life

And despite all the reflection and escapism that capoeira offers, the politics of its day-to-day administration is as divided and mundane as any other group activity. There are disputes within groups and between them. Groups tend to acknowledge the legitimacy of their mestre and lineage rather than submitting to an overarching authority.

What counts as capoeira, the names of the moves, interaction with different styles provided grounds for little agreement through the 20^th century. The pressures of globalisation, the need to attract students, the struggle of making a living from art are worldly concerns that contribute to the dimensions of the relationship between capoeira and life.

Contradictory, as is life

Contradictions - what´s not to like?

Equilibrium in capoeira is not static with both feet planted on the floor but fluid and responsive. Capoeira maintains contradictions – of deceit and camaraderie, of hanging out and discipline, of fighting and playing, of equality and hierarchy, of authority and resistance, of united struggle and internal division. It is all very contradictory. Life can be like that.

When I die

I don’t want crying or mystery.

I want a berimbau playing

At the gate of the cemetery

With a yellow ribbon round it.

(ladainha from CD Mestre Traíre/ FICA songbook p5)

References:

Faber, A. (2004). Saint Orlan. Ritual as violent spectacle and cultural criticism. The Performance Studies Reader. H. Bial. London and New York, Routledge: 108-116.

Fundação Internacional de Capoeira Angola/ International Capoeira Angola Foundation (FICA/ICAF), Livro de Músicas (Ladainhas/Corridos), in-house publication.

Lowell Lewis, J. (1992). Ring of Liberation: deceptive discourse in Brazilian capoeira. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.

Miller, B. (1992). "Collective action and rational choice. Place, community and the limits to individual self-interest." Economic Geography 68(1): 22-42.