Capoeira
Does capoeira show that cultural expression can be a way to resist oppression?
Source 1: Capoeira: An Art For Everyone
By Smithsonian Staff
Faces
It’s a dance, a martial art, a game, and a way of life.
Capoeira (kah-pou-EY-rah) is one of Brazil’s best-known cultural traditions. Under the instruction of masters, known as Mestres, such as Jelon Vieira and João Oliveria dos Santos—both NEA National Heritage Fellows who now live in New York City—this lively art attracts thousands of young students across the United States.
Why is capoeira so popular? Perhaps the answer lies in its combination of dance, music, and acrobatics with self-defense techniques. Players do not actually hit each other. Instead, they move respectfully in continuous sequences of attack and defense. The sequences are smooth, methodical, and rhythmic—and of course, fun.
According to legend, capoeira was created in the mid-1500s by enslaved Africans who were brought to Brazil to work on sugarcane farms. The Africans brought nothing with them except their diverse language and traditions—including martial arts. Slave owners felt threatened by their unfamiliar fighting skills and forbid them to practice.
In an attempt to trick their owners, the capoeiristas disguised their fights as dance by adding music. Eventually, some enslaved Africans were able to escape and establish secret settlements called quilombos, which offered freedom and the opportunity to revive traditional cultures away from oppression. There, traditional fighting was refined and developed into what is now capoeira. In 1890, the Brazilian government banned capoeira, but the quilombolas continued practicing secretly. In 1930, the ban was lifted, and capoeira began to flourish.
Learning capoeira takes a great deal of practice and hard work. Mestres Jelon and João have developed their own distinctive teaching styles that include physical training and music instruction.
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PAUSE AND REFLECT: History has shown us that art can have the power to move people socially or politically. What can you infer about the Brazilian government of the 1890s, if it banned capoeira after enslavement had already been prohibited?
Capoeira Music
Capoeira songs are sung in Brazil’s official language, Portuguese. The songs are about the country, its people, history, the sea, gods and goddesses, myths, and capoeira. The instruments included the berimbau, atabaque, agogô, and rêco-rêco. The berimbau is a long wooden bow with a steel wire and a hollowed-out gourd near the bottom. It sets the tempo and mood of the game: fast or slow, playful or aggressive. The atabaque is a tall drum. The agogô is made of two coconut shells or cowbells mounted together and hit with a stick. The rêco-rêco is a piece of notched bamboo played by moving a stick up and down the side to produce a scraping sound. In addition to the capoeira movements, students learn how to play these instruments and sing the songs.
É verdade meu colega (“It’s True, My Friend”)
É verdade meu amigo
It’s true, my friend
Esta vida é um colosso
This life is a monster
Mas vale nossa amisade
Our friendship is worth
Do que dinherio no bolso
More than money in the pocket
PAUSE AND REFLECT: Songs can reveal a lot about the circumstances in which they were written. What does the songwriter’s description of life as a “monster” tell you about colonial Brazil?
Source 2: Capoeira: From Crime to Culture (excerpt)
By Eduardo Soares, Senior Foreign Law Specialist, Global Legal Research Center
Library of Congress
Portuguese explorers first made landfall in Brazil on April 22, 1500. After the discovery, the colonial period was marked by the use of enslaved laborers who came mainly from Africa to work in agriculture and in domestic roles. Slavery existed in Brazil until May 13, 1888, when Imperial Law No. 3,353 (Lei Imperial No. 3.353, de 13 de Maio de 1888) put an end to slavery and set all enslaved people in Brazil free.
For more than 300 years enslaved people were deprived of their freedom, forced to abandon their countries of origin, to work on a distant land and to live under extreme hardship. Enslaved peoples started to develop capoeira as a result of these adverse conditions.
Capoeira in Portuguese means, among other things, land on which the forest was burned or grazed for the purpose of cultivating the land or the development of some other activity. Nowadays, a master of capoeira (mestre de capoeira), Almir das Areias, has defined capoeira as a “fight, a dance, a form of personal defense, sport, culture, art and folklore, as well as music, poetry, celebration, amusement, recreation and, above all, a form of struggle, a public demonstration and expression of the people, the oppressed common man in general, who is in search of survival, freedom and dignity.” For the purpose of comparison, a modern legal dictionary defines capoeira as a violent athletic game that, sometimes, is played with knives.
During the colonial period, enslaved people who were able to escape from the farms found refuge in hidden areas called quilombos. They gathered in open areas in the forest to perform a dance/fight, which was named capoeira, as a means of survival and cultural expression. The performance received its name, most likely, because of the place where it was performed, a capoeira, or, in an open area.
The escapes did not go unpunished. Enslaved people were considered expensive commodities in the agricultural-based economy that relied on them for its cultivation. Plantation owners, therefore, formed militias with the sole purpose of retrieving escaped enslaved people. Without many weapons and with restricted resources, the enslaved people used their bodies as their main source of defense.
Initially, enslaved people imitated animal movements of attack and defense to defend themselves against the imminent threat of being captured and enslaved, once again, by the militia groups. As a recreational form, capoeira was played as a means to demonstrate feelings and hopes, and also to attack their owners. If an enslaved person was caught playing capoeira, the punishment was to be whipped while attached to the branch of a tree, and in many cases, death.
Later, capoeira started to be played in a circle formed by people singing and following the rhythm dictated by a rustic instrument called berimbau. The play resembled a fight disguised in a strange form of dance because its powerful strokes were strong enough to inflict serious bodily harm or even kill a person if knives were used during the dance/fight. Apparently, the berimbau was used to warn the slaves that the slave-owner or the farm’s foreman was coming to their quarters (senzala) and to disguise the fight as a form of dance, and therefore avoid punishment. Perhaps that explains why people who practice capoeira do not fight, they play.
PAUSE AND REFLECT: The connections between enslavement and capoeira are undeniable. Beyond developing—and disguising— a fighting technique, how did enslaved Africans use capoeira to resist oppression?
Source 3: Capoeira circle (10-min video)
By UNESCO
film : ©IPHAN/Bossa Pro, with the permission of UNESCO
Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian cultural practice – simultaneously a fight and a dance – that can be interpreted as a tradition, a sport and even an art form. Capoeira players form a circle at the centre [sic] of which two players engage with one another. The movements require great bodily dexterity. The other players around the circle sing, chant, clap and play percussive instruments. Capoeira circles are formed by a group of people of any gender, and comprise a master, counter-master and disciples. The master is the bearer and guardian of the knowledge of the circle, and is expected to teach the repertoire and to maintain the group’s cohesion and its observance to a ritual code. The master usually plays a single string percussion instrument, starts the chants, and leads the game’s timing and rhythm. All participants are expected to know how to make and play the instrument, sing a shared repertoire of chants, improvise songs, know and respect the codes of ethics and conduct, and perform the movements, steps and strikes. The capoeira circle is a place where knowledge and skills are learned by observation and imitation. It also functions as an affirmation of mutual respect between communities, groups and individuals and promotes social integration and the memory of resistance to historical oppression.
PAUSE AND REFLECT: Capoeira emphasizes inclusion— people of any race and gender may learn and practice it today. Why would a martial art that has origins in a very specific experience welcome everyone to learn it today?