Traditional heritage threatened as Brazil’s capoeira booms

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

Traditional heritage threatened as Brazil’s capoeira
booms

By Michael Astor
Associated Press Writer

SALVADOR, Brazil (AP) — The master, wearing
dreadlocks, dings out a twangy rhythm on his
bow-shaped “berimbau’’ and lets loose with a plaintive
melody recalling slavery days.

Two men, glistening with sweat, squat before him,
reaching up to touch the African instrument’s
resonating gourd. They cross themselves and shake
hands before cart-wheeling into the circle formed by
the other players, singing and clapping hands.

The players exchange rapid-fire flurries of spinning
kicks, feints and flips and keep time with the
syncopated beat, their feet missing each other’s heads
by mere fractions of inches. What looks like a dance
one minute, looks like a fight the next.

This is capoeira (pronounced cap-oo-way-rah) , a
400-year-old martial art disguised as dance, born in
the holds of slave ships and on the plantations around
Salvador da Bahia, Brazil’s first capital.

Once banned as a lethal weapon in the hands of
Brazil’s newly freed slaves, today capoeira is more
popular than ever, with schools across Brazil and in
over 150 countries around the globe.

There is even talk of making it an Olympic sport—if
only someone could figure out how to keep score.

But Capoeira’s explosive popularity abroad is cause
for concern as well as pride. Many here fear the
international attention will rob capoeira of its
uniquely Brazilian identity, in the same way that
Japanese samba dancers now tour Europe, and bossa
singers have become more popular abroad than they are
in Brazil.
“Capoeira has always been an oral tradition without
any documentation of our history. There have been a
lot of cases in the past where foreigners came and
filmed and documented things so they are now better
known abroad than in Brazil. We have to prevent
that,’’ said Rubens Costa Silva, better known as
Mestre Bamba.
He estimates as many as 3,000 foreigners a year pass
through his academy on the second story of a colonial
house in Salvador’s historic Pelorinho district, where
a virtual rainbow coalition of students can be seen
working up a sweat on any given night.

To preserve capoeira’s Brazilian essence, the culture
ministry has been documenting Capoeira’s mostly oral
history, taking depositions from old masters and
digging up old books and newspaper clippings, in
preparation for an appeal to UNESCO later this year to
recognize Brazilian capoeira as part of the
“intangible heritage of humanity.’’ The distinction is
meant to preserve cultural traditions needing
protection in the face of globalization.

UNESCO requires real government safeguards, such as
financial support for research, specialized teaching
and protective legal measures. The culture ministry
envisions increased funding to schools that teach
traditional capoeira and government pensions for the
old masters, who have a long history of dying
destitute and in obscurity.

“Capoeira has been seen as a martial art or just as a
sport. We want to highlight its cultural aspects—that
it is part of the memory and history of Brazil’s Black
people. We want to recognize this is an important part
of our history,’’ said Marcia Sant’Anna, the Culture
Ministry’s director of intangible heritage.

The UNESCO effort focuses on preserving capoeira’s
rich history, but Sant’Anna said the ministry also
wants to respect its evolution as a living art.

Capoeira probably would never have survived if not for
the innovations of Manuel dos Reis Machado, the
legendary Mestre Bimba (no relation to Bamba), who
opened the first capoeira school in 1932 and codified
the movements. By courting the sons of admirals and
politicians as students, Bimba was largely responsible
for overturning the ban on capoeira that had been
imposed two years after Brazil became the last country
in the Western Hemisphere to free the slaves in 1888.

Bimba even performed before President Getulio Vargas
in 1937, a demonstration that led Vargas to declare
capoeira Brazil’s national sport—a fact often
forgotten in this nation of rabid soccer fans.

But Bimba’s new style called “regional’’ also
incorporated elements from Asian martial arts, such as
colored belts to denote rank and many of the flashier
kicks, offending traditionalists.

In 1942, capoeira’s other great master, Vincente
Ferreira Pastinha, or Mestre Pastinha, opened up a
rival capoeira school calling his style “Angola,’’ in
a reference to the art’s African origins.

For many years, people preferred regional’s flashier
movements. Angola’s slower low-to-the-ground style
languished in obscurity until the late 1970s when it
caught the interest of Brazil’s nascent Black
consciousness movement and gradually spread abroad
with old masters like Joao Grande—a student of
Pastinha who now teaches in New York City.

Colette Desilets, a 51-year-old Canadian widely
credited with bringing capoeira Angola to Canada, says
that in many cases foreigners are more reverent and
respecting of capoeira’s roots, more inclined to
preserve traditions, than Brazilians are.

“Even in Brazil capoeira can lose it’s Brazilianness.
Here they are adding jiujitsu moves. I only do what my
master tells me,’’ said Desiletes, who was visiting
Brazil for a month with 12 of her students.

Another innovation certain to change the face of
capoeira is the move to have it declared an Olympic
sport.
Gersonilto Heleno do Sousa, who is leading the effort
as president of the Brazilian Capoeira Confederation,
hopes capoeira, which doesn’t require either player to
knock his opponent out, could be scored in manner
closer to Olympic gymnastics than to boxing.

“We would probably like capoeira to begin as
demonstration sport and become competitive only later,
after it gains greater recognition,’’ Sousa said.