JAGUAR MAGAZINE
Fighting spirit
Half dance, half martial art, capoeira embodies the spirit of Brazil. We travel from Salvador to União de Palmares to explore its roots.
It’s hard to hit a moving target. This could explain one of the key moves in capoeira – the ginga – a distinctive swaying refrain that keeps the players in perpetual motion, fluid and poised for action. The same can be said of capoeira itself, the Brazilian sport-fight-art-game is difficult to pin down. With its origins in slavery centuries ago, it has evolved today into a practice which defies simple definition. I’ve come to Brazil to trace its roots and learn why this ancient art has spread to hundreds of countries across the globe.
Bahia in Brazil’s north east is widely considered to be the birthplace of capoeira. And Salvador is the country’s cultural capital according to my guide Luis. “We say that people from Salvador aren’t born, they make a debut” he remarks as we watch pairs of street capoeiristas flip and whirl with alarming speed in Largo Terreiro de Jesus square. The precision cartwheels and stingray tail kicks miss the fighters’ faces by millimetres.
The lithe young athletes pose standing on their hands, grinning broadly for the tourists. But when I ask Jason, one of the youngest in the group, what capoeira means to him he earnestly credits it with saving his life. “Many of my friends are now dead or in trouble with the police. Capoeira has taken me to a different place. I owe it everything I have.” It seems in the chaos of poverty capoeira offers some sense of control for these young men.
This is the showier side of capoeira which provides a vital outlet and source of income for Jason and his friends. He has travelled overseas to perform and hopes that capoeira will become an Olympic sport so more opportunities open up. Much like boxing and football capoeira can be a way out for kids who’ve been deprived of education and support. These street capoeiristas clearly train as hard as any professional athletes except they do it on concrete, in searing heat, for whatever the tourists will pay.
It is late afternoon as we leave the square and the sun begins to show mercy, eclipsed by clouds so thick you could bite them. Salvador is achingly beautiful, steep cobbled streets flanked by sun-battered pastels. The bleached palette forms a vivid jumble, there is little in the way of city planning, “Neighbourhoods just happen” Luis explains. Crumbling Portuguese colonial buildings bear intricate blue and white tiles concealed by decaying layers of graffiti and posters.
The subject of the Olympics arises again when I meet academic, musician, film-maker and capoeirista Pedro Abib. He has written extensively about capoeira and cultural identity. He laments its commodification and is firmly against it becoming a competitive sport. He believes it to be more cultural than sporting and resists the disconnection from its roots. “It is far more than a sport. It is not about winners and losers, it is not competition but connection. It is a philosophical dialogue.” Pedro doesn’t want to see capoeira annexed by gyms and sold to consumers. He sees it as a powerful agent of healing and equality in a fractured society.
There are some disputes about the exact origins of capoeira. The most common account is that African slaves imported by the Portuguese in the 16th century developed a clandestine martial art to liberate themselves. Routinely criminalised in the 20th century it was hijacked by street gangs and the military for their own ends. Some people feel that the credibility of the practice is yet to be fully recognised today despite its UNESCO status as Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Before visiting Salvador I had been dimly aware of capoeira through Nokia adverts and BBC idents. Computer game Tekken has a capoeira fighter. It has even been co-opted by Hollywood, Vincent Cassel’s character in Ocean 13 contorts himself through strobing laser security using capoeira moves. But these displays only tell a fraction of the story, a gymnastic battle divorced from the music, lyrics, spirituality and play that make it such a rich and involving art. It was not until I saw capoeira in context at Mestre Nenel’s academy that I really began to glimpse its beating heart.
I clamber down narrow stairs to Fundação Mestre Bimba feeling the energy rise as I enter a small subterranean room packed with white cotton-clad students. Cramped around the small roda (circle of play) a raucous assembly of all shapes and ages. In the centre the two players move slowly, eyes locked on each other, mirroring and answering one another’s moves. They seamlessly feint, leg sweep, roll over one another in a mischievous dance. I’m hypnotised. The mood is playful and collaborative. Everyone is smiling and singing. A new pair move into the roda rocking back and forth to the berimbau’s twang. There is a palpable sense of good will, respect and community.
It takes a while for the throng to disperse. Everyone wants to speak to Mestre Nenel. He is the son of Mestre Bimba, the founding father of Capoeira Regional. There are two main strands, but many permutations of capoeira. Regional is generally considered to be more athletic and faster with clearer stages of development including a system of coloured cords, though even this varies between schools. Angola is associated with Mestre Pastinha who championed the more traditional style. Some adherents have tried to merge the two strands in Capoeira Contemporânea.
Mestre Bimba saw the educational potential in capoeira and aimed to legitimise the art according to his son Mestre Nenel. He and his wife Mestra Preguiça run an impressive array of social projects for marginalised young people. Mestra Preguiça is keen to convey that it is their duty to protect and promote Mestre Bimba’s principles, to foster a sense of belonging and accomplishment in their charges. She touches on why it may have such broad appeal, “It’s inclusive. It’s for everyone.” She has seen it give substance to lost children’s lives and solace to the inmates she taught in a German prison.
She also explains that these are not their real names, rather they are baptised with nicknames when they graduate. Mestra Preguiça is so-named because as a novice she was too shy to play, which her master interpreted as laziness and the name stuck, although she is demonstrably anything but.
Emerging onto the vertiginous streets of Pelourinho I feel drums still echoing through my rib cage. Rhythm is everywhere in Salvador, in the tik-a-tik of samba on car speakers and the pounding bloco afros (drumming collectives). Paul Simon famously filmed The Obvious Child video here, harnessing the complex polyrhythms of local Olodum drummers for his album The Rhythm of the Saints.
The only time I can’t hear music is when the deafening church bells echo through the city. It is said there is a church for every day of the week in Salvador but in fact there are many more. Catholicism and Candomblé co-mingle as the main religions in this region. Candomblé is itself a fusion of African and Catholic beliefs. At the Church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim a packed mass takes place inside while a stream of visitors tether their wishes to the gates in the form of fitas ribbons. Dozens of women trailing strings of beads dance by, their ample white skirts balloon and slacken in the breeze. They carry flowers, perfume and mirrors to offer Yemanjá, goddess of the sea.
I only have 24 hours left in the city and I’m keen to see more. Swooping through the maze of roads in the XE the sun casts everything into silhouette against the glittering Atlantic. A beat-up green Beetle veers merrily across me to an exit but generally the driving is mellow. I skirt the coast where people cluster in the water chatting, small children back flip into a stony cove, boats idle and bob. I pass a man with a machete 30 feet up a coconut tree clearing debris, only a taut rope loop and a prayer between him and hospital.
My last stop is Forte da Capoeira at dusk. An elegant 17th century fortfication against Dutch invaders and erstwhile prison it now houses several distinguished capoeira academies. I’m delighted to meet Mestre Boca Rica, student of the revered Mestre Pastinha. He’s 83 years-old, impossibly limber, impish and charming. I can’t keep him still for a second. He reaches for his berimbau the second I arrive and serenades me with several improvised litanies. I ask him what they are about and he twinkles. “All the important things obviously. Women and pretty girls!” His particular passion for capoeira is in creating and preserving the music. He has recorded a number of albums and travels the world spreading the word. Music is a core component of capoeira and Mestre Moraes, an accomplished academic and composer, was nominated for a Grammy in the 1980s for his album of capoeira songs.
Boca Rica’s neighbour Mestra Nani is the grand-daughter of influential Mestre Pequeno, another of Pastinha’s students. She represents the younger generation of teachers but is dedicated to her grandfather’s legacy, proud that he did not discriminate against women in the roda. She struggled as a teenage mother and speaks movingly of how capoeira instilled her with confidence and the sense she could take up some space in the world. These days she teaches capoeira as a route to equality and an inspiration to fight violence against women.
My time in Salvador is up and I’m starting to see how much there is still to learn. So I’m going further back in time, to União dos Palmares, home to the largest known slave settlement in the Americas, the fabled Quilombo dos Palmares. Quilombos were settlements of fugitive slaves, and the one in Palmares was once home to an estimated 30,000 people. I’m hoping it will bring me closer to the earliest origins of capoeira.
As I leave the city next morning the traffic soon thins. Stop light street vendors crowd the car offering windscreen cleaning and jack fruit snacks. I pass countless petrol stations and swimming pool vendors. Police checkpoints are frequent and I hope the whole drive will not be like this. Soon I reach the Rodovia Estrada do Côco and Linha Verde and I thank Yemanjá since I don’t know if there is a Goddess of the Road. The Green Line cuts a dramatic path through Atlantic forest, brilliant white sand dunes and elaborately contoured warm pink rock. Road signs warn of donkeys and sloths but my biggest challenge is to slalom round an army of frogs stuck to the tarmac, attracted by the heat. As evening falls I moonbathe through the sun roof.
Some 12 hours from Salvador, through sugar cane and cattle fields, I arrive in União dos Palmares in Alagoas. The town is scrappy but bright, horse-drawn carts rule the road. Curious eyes follow me from the windows of chalky mint and yellow homes.
I’ve arrived just in time to join a procession commemorating the last battle of Palmares. The quilombolas, led by their iconic leader Zumbi, had resisted countless incursions, but in the final assault of 1694 the settlement was decimated and Zumbi killed.
Every year in Back to Angola Janga (Little Angola) descendants of those that survived the battle gather to honour those that fought. We slowly climb 4km up Serra da Barriga hill, stopping at various points to dance, drink, share poetry and speeches and of course play capoeira. The tone is celebratory but solemn too. We walk through the night, everyone dressed in white, in a ghostly relief against the dense black sky. The darkness seems to pull us closer together.
We end high up on the hill at dawn, in the replica Quilombo dos Palmares, a kind of living model and museum. It is an impressive but sobering place. I take time to sit and reflect. A coppery hummingbird keeps me company, known in Portuguese as a beija-flor or flower-kisser. His more vocal cousins screech from the trees but otherwise this is a peaceful place. A monument to the unimaginable suffering of Afro-Brazilians’ enslaved ancestors but also to their extraordinary endurance and courage.
Slave-owners would separate families and tribes to discourage fraternisation. It’s easy to imagine that capoeira was a way for people from very different places to communicate without words, to come together. The people here feel strong ties to their history and see capoeira as a direct link to their forebears. It still serves for many as a potent symbol of resistance.
There is a satisfying symmetry in knowing that this once-outlawed art now plays a crucial role in helping young people stay away from criminality. Some practitioners want to innovate, others to capitalise, some to honour and preserve. Whatever happens next there is only one thing that is certain about the future of capoeira – it will never stop moving.
Words: Jenni Doggett
Photography: Wilson Hennessy