Novermber 20th: The day of Black Awareness

Organization in Brasil have been celebrating November 20th as the day of Black Awareness since the 1960s (in 2003, it became a national holiday).

The date, November 20th, was chosen to commemorate the death of Zumbi, one of the icons of resistance against slavery in Brasil. Zumbi was the last leader of the Kilombo (or Quilombo) of Palmares, a community of over 10,000 people (at its peak) that resisted incursions by the Portuguese for over 80 years. More recently, people have also been focusing on the figure of Dandara. Zumbi was Dandara's husband. She is understood to have participated in the defense of Palmares both by helping the plans and by fighting directly with against the Portuguese Army.

To commemorate this day, we'll read an abridged version of the document below.

The Gunga: a Griot instrument to connect with the Ancestors ^st 2017

Originally posted on facebook by Maicol William on June 1, 2016

FROM WIKIPEDIA: A griot is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet and/or musician. Griots are a repository of oral tradition and are often seen as a societal leader due to their traditional position as advisors to royalty. According to the book Savannah Syncopators, "Though [griots] have to know many traditional songs without error, they must also have the ability to extemporize on current events, chance incidents and the passing scene. Their wit can be devastating and their knowledge of local history formidable". Although they are popularly known as "praise singers", griots may use their vocal expertise for gossip, satire, or political comment.

Once I read that in past, in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, one of capoeiristas favorite pastimes, aside from challenging the police and showing the elites who should fear and respect who, was to climb up on bell towers and ring the bells. Some interpreted this very dangerous behavior (which resulted in grave accidents and even death) as purely exhibitionism, like the behavior of a street child. It was more than this. Street kids, who love exhibitionism, were enchanted by the capoeiristas and considered them almost superhuman. The capoeiristas reputation and their aura of invincibility made them the stuff of legends. Add their in their elegance, their smooth behavior, their easy smile always on their face, their incomparable cunning, their mandinga, and their “closed body”, and you can see how they would easily be described as godlike. The racist society in which they lived however painted them as devils. And this portrayal as devils is what has been sustained in the history books. We get fuller picture of why capoeiristas were considered supernatural beings when we consider that their exhibitionism pushed them to often would demonstrate their abilities in public. It’s interesting that, whether they were considered half-god or half-devil, they were perceived as more than human.

But let’s focus on the bell. A bell is an instrument to tell the official time. Those who control the bells are those who have the power to announce the important moments to the entire group. The Church, which the official institutions in Brasil recognize as the representative of God’s will, holds the monopoly over bells that keep time publicly. Having bells means having power. And capoeiristas like to give demonstrations of power. Therefore, in the same way in which they went to subvert the public order by challenging the elites, in the same way in which they challenged the police over the definition of public order, they took on the power to tell the time and they made the bells ring. In a structure that was designed to make them the least important people in society, they would laugh in everyone’s face and make themselves the most prominent. The dominant social institutions wished to stomp on their head, they placed themselves in a position of power. Capoeira is an exercise in self-determination, in freedom. And for Black people, freedom cannot be exercised without daring, without subversion. Black folks were not born to follow rules – we were born to break them. Because the reality is that in Brasil [and in the United States], rules were made against us, they were designed to oppress us, capture us, kill us. Look at the statistics about mass incarceration, poverty, vote suppression, police brutality. Those who believe that this was true in the past, but no longer, are fooling themselves. The need to challenge society’s norms is still present. Challenging the structure is Black people’s law. We can only exist so long as we continue this challenge.

Once again, let’s leave the conversation about the essence of Capoeira to the side for a moment and focus on the bell. The bell has the power to capture people’s attention and to announce that the time has come. The bell signals the moment of connection. When church bells ring, they remind people of God, of spirituality. Many [catholic] people do the sign of the cross. Church bells announce the beginning of Mass. It is almost impossible to remain indifferent to the sound of a bell, even for those who were not raised in the Christian faith.  The berimbau has the same properties, it fulfills all of these function. The berimbau captures people’s attention, no-one can ignore it, people crane their necks to see what it is. The word gunga itself, which comes from the Bantu languages, means “bell”. And if the berimbau is our bell, then the roda is our Mass.

The Gunga bears the voice. The Gunga is king. The Gunga is God. The Gunga is the one who controls the roda. It calls some people to come to “Mass”, and it invokes the ancestors to the ritual. It announces the time to meet our ancestors, to work on our spirituality. The Gunga holds great power. In our current society, this power is being suffocated, just like the power to challenge the system is being suffocated. Our society obscures the fact that Black people are descendants of great civilizations, of glorious lineages of kings and queens. Whiteness hides anything that might bring pride or power to Black people. If today we don’t identify all of the greatness that exists in Black people and in Capoeira, this is because of the culture of whiteness. Some people believe that Black Brasillians are ‘descendants of slaves’ and that Capoeira is only a form of street fight. They want us to believe that they are the ones who freed the slaves, and freed Capoeira from the clutches of street thugs. They sell the idea that Black people should be happy with their current conditions because ‘things were much worse.’ This is how it works: choose the worst possible term of comparison, and everything can be portrayed as an improvement. We should distrust every part of this official narrative, and look beyond the curtain. Our mission should be to subvert this narrative. We must refer to what Black people had before the intervention of whiteness in history.

See what power there is in being the bearer of history, the holder of the voice. In Capoeira, the Gunga is the one that tells our stories, the guardian of the voice. The Gunga is power. The person who receives the Gunga holds – or should hold – the role of the griot. The oral tradition is fundamental, because the griot’s voice carries history. Words form a connection that is the basic principle of connection to the ancestors, to spirituality. Words are Axé. They connect us to one another, to the future, to the past, to the entire world… If you close your eyes an think to griots fulfilling their duties, using the instrument called kora, which also has certain similar features to a berimbau, you get an image similar to a roda, in which the person with the Gunga is in the center, as a reference to all the others. Our society however wants to leave this correspondence between the Gunga and the griot in the past. The oral tradition is neglected. It’s common these days, at the end of the roda, to simply acknowledge the Mestres and guests who are present and to list upcoming events. No history. It almost seems like a commercial, and it is, in some ways. But it should be a commercial for our history, which has few other means to be spread in our society.

The death of the oral tradition is the killing of Capoeira itself. Killing the griot means breaking the main channel for the distribution of the oral tradition. This is one of the main reasons why Capoeira has been growing further away from its origins. This is in large part a reflection of the process of whitening. When we pass the Gunga and Capoeira itself to someone who represents the opposite of the history of Capoeira, the roda serves an opposite purpose. Without an intense amount of previous work, white people don’t have the minimum prerequisites to fulfill this role. First, because the history of Black people is erased by society’s institutions. Since this is the case, without having an interest and expending great effort, it cannot be accessed. And how can you tell a story that you don’t know? Secondly, because the “official” history of white people, (the ‘master narrative’ of history) is taught and reinforced everywhere. Even if they wanted to talk about their history, what would there be to talk about? There is no need for a griot to tell the “official” master narrative of history for white people. Even more than this, the stories told by a griot would denounce and challenge the master narrative of history, calling into question the narrative that “I deserved what I worked for, no-one gave me anything”. The society would be confronted with the huge historical debts that it owes to Black people and Indigenous people, among others. This is reason enough why whiteness must erase those stories. Therefore the function of griot in Capoeira gets set aside, because this is how whiteness works: it promotes the idea that you should take what you like, and eliminate the rest.

However, Black culture cannot allow this, it is fundamentally holistic. Either you respect everything or you have nothing. We are taught that, when you enter into someone’s home, we behave according to the norms of that home. For those who are respectful, you dress in white on the days in which you are expected to dress in white. It doesn’t matter if you feel better wearing other colors. It is necessary to make sacrifices to be part of a community. If you only follow the community when it is entirely convenient to you, then the community serves you and not the other way around. The community establishes a relationship of solidarity and you don’t reciprocate. It is necessary to learn how to sacrifice in order to maintain the tradition. Imagine if each individual demanded that a community adapt to each of their personal preferences. Things would get lost – there would be no essence preserved. Identities would disappear. A culture of resistance is a culture of preservation. We have to make an effort for a community, give this respect. The community decides the direction, and the individual should accept the decision. This doesn’t mean to lose oneself entirely, but find one’s place. This is the meaning of the word ubuntu.

The problem is that there is a radical difference between Black culture and the culture of whiteness. Individual white people are not the problem. The problem is the culture that they learn. They must re-educate themselves. Their individualism is in direct opposition to a sense of community. Whiteness, colonialism and capitalism push people to use and discard, to exploit the resources, exhaust them, and leave. To take the parts you like and throw away the rest. Once you begin to operate like that with Capoeira or with any other cultural artform, you change its essence. Imagine someone asking for a bacon cheeseburger without bacon and without cheese.

Without a griot, without an oral tradition, you close the channel to the ancestors. Without ancestrality, there can be no Black culture – if for no other reason that without the ancestors we wouldn’t be here, neither ourselves nor our culture. Therefore we have to reestablish the link Gunga-griot-oral tradition-ancestors. The Gunga is a responsibility – a big responsibility. Being the bearer of the voice is not for everyone. The bearer of the voice cannot remain silent. The bearer of the voice must share this voice. How can you use the Gunga to call everyone together, those here and those who have passed on, and not complete the connection? Let us cultivate the oral tradition – it is the basic element. This is for everyone, both for Black people and for white people. However, white people have to be extremely more careful since, as I said above, they did not grow up in this culture and in fact were exposed to the opposite values. Beyond this, they bear some historical debts that they should stop trying to avoid, most of all if they wish to participate in Black culture and be among Black people without being in the way.

Starting from the moment in which we give the berimbau in a white person’s hand without guaranteeing that they have understood the function of a griot, and that they have taken up the responsibility that it entails, starting from the moment in which we give them the power to tell our stories, we are setting ourselves up for the loss of some things. However, it’s worth remarking on the fact that we don’t do this spontaneously, out of our own will. In this country, we were never allowed to have our own will. We always had to struggle to exercise it. And we always confronted terrible repression when we did so. Either we bury our will, or we are buried along with it. Therefore, rather than dying, better to give some things up. So that in the future, when the opportunity presents itself, we may re-establish ourselves and re-enter the game.

We are accustomed to celebrate those who died for us, but we sometimes forget those who, perhaps even while preferring to die, did not do so that they could secure the continuity of our history, passing the baton to the next generation, in the hopes that they might be avenged by their descendants who, under better circumstances, might be strengthened by their culture and rewrite the history. It might be difficult to understand that for some people, sacrificing their lives meant to live on. Live on in the name of the community of the lineage, becoming a bridge. Equally important to those who died, they lived to tell their tales, taking on the role of the griot, taking care that those who died didn’t stay dead, guaranteeing that our group doesn’t decline but grows in number. When the time comes, we’ll need everybody. And when the time comes, the bell will mark its arrival. But the bell has to ring. It is necessary to make the gunga speak. In order for this to happen, the person who plays the gunga must become a griot. Through the oral tradition, we must elevate our spirituality and access our ancestrality. Knowing where we’re going is crucially related to knowing who and where we came from. Our future will be written by answering the questions that were not addressed in the past. Sankofa is the philosophy that must be practiced more and more. And Sankofa is also Ubuntu – very much so! When we say “I am because we are,” we must remember who we are now and who we will be in the future must be built starting with who we were.

[arranged and translated by Matteo Tamburini. NOTE: the ability to read the entire document in the original is one more reason why you should learn Portuguese.]

For a reference to Capoeiristas climbing Church Towers, see: Capoeira: A History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art, by Matthias Röhrig Assunção

For the original, see https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1941102539507671&id=1921597918124800

About Capoeira and cultural appropriation

Our Mestres teach us that Capoeira is not just for the 'little roda' (of Capoeira itself), but it is also for the 'grande roda' of life. Our Mestres' message, as I have heard it, has always been that we should always be striving to learn more, to challenge ourselves, to do our own research and then bring the issues or questions we find back to our groups.

Sometimes our challenges may be physical (doing a beautiful and effective au'), sometimes they may be linguistic (learning a long corrido in Portuguese), sometimes they may be emotional (overcoming our fears, or our tendency to get upset, when we play in the little roda). Sometimes those challenges come to us in the 'grande roda' of life with its many injustices.

In the context of the broader struggle for racial justice, we can often find ourselves confronting the ugly reality of the insidious ways in which racism as a phenomenon influences our lives - including in our practice of Capoeira Angola. After reading an insightful article about these issues by Maisha Z. Johnson, which I recommend to everyone, I wanted to jot down questions that should be in the back of our minds:

1) In our Capoeira practice, do we trivialize the history of violent oppression against Black people in Brasil? In general, in our lives, do we trivialize the history and current practice of violence against Black people by the state and by individuals both in Brasil and in the United States?

2) We appreciate the culture of Black people that are participating in. Do we actively seek to challenge our prejudices and stereotypes about Black people?

3) Do we judge White and Black people differently for practicing Capoeira? Or for participating in elements of African/Black culture? 

4) In our practice of Capoeira, do we gain monetary or financial benefit off of undervalued labor of Black people?

5) Do we get rewarded or celebrated for things that the creators of the art, and our Mestres, have not been acknowledged for, or are not rewarded for?

6) In our Capoeira Angola practice, are we spreading a misrepresentation of history? Do we actively seek to learn more about the history of Capoeira and the experience of colonization and the slave trade?

7) In our practice of Capoeira Angola, are we perpetuating racist stereotypes?

8) We have access to something that Black people were punished for doing. What are we doing to increase access to Capoeira for Black people?

Devagar se vai ao longe - P'ra crescer se leva tempo;
Slowly you will go far - to grow it takes time.

A bit of our past

I stumbled upon a very interesting interview between two people who are part of our FICA family: Njoli Brown (currently with FICA NYC) and ContraMestre Kamau, of FICA Philadelphia - who we hope to bring to Bellingham for the Afro-Brasilian Festival!
Kamau has been involved with FICA in the United States from the early days, and the snippet below tells a little bit of that history.

You can (and should!) read the whole thing here.

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Njoli:  [...]  You also talked a bit earlier about how some of the racial encounters that were going on in the states were very different.   You know, we recognize that concepts on race relations are diverse, whether you’re talking about from the perspective of African Americans, Africans, Brazilians or any of us descendants throughout the diaspora because of our varied histories and experiences.  So I’m curious about how you felt about the different roles race has played in your Capoeira experience, whether that means in the context of FICA or Capoeira Angola or whatever.

 

ContraMestre Kamau playing with Treinel Puck

ContraMestre Kamau:  Well, my foundations were and are in activism and Africanist thoughts and theory.  I grew up with that and it got even stronger when I got to undergrad.  Coming up here (Philadelphia), the community, it’s not as large and the culture is more… northern, not as connected, not as… friendly. So it’s much easier to cultivate oneself  down south.  Here, you can still feel isolated, can feel like there’s beef between organizations that actually look like or seem like they’re supposed to have the same motives.  You don’t have that so much down south.  Up here you grow into a kind of aesthetic of toughness. People don’t share space as much.  There’s kind of a different vibe.

    I remember our first years playing Odunde, ’95 or ’96.  It was black people, playing Capoeira , black folks, and I remember there was one year that Cobrinha came and he had some guests with him and some of them were white.  It shook a lot of people, there was a kind of embarrassment.  I think people were caught up in this idea that maybe the crowds not feeling us this year, some old “Oh, I thought this was this.  Why you got them with that?” The challenge was a fear that we wouldn’t have this feeling of being at home anymore or of having a community that would support us.  After you’d do some demo, your hope was that people would want to come learn more about Capoeira and that year maybe the thought was we would finish and people would be like “I don’t want anything to do with that.”

   It was a difficult transition and I know in my own group we had a separation of thoughts and ideologies.  There were people who thought that kind of integration was a threat to a kind of African centered thought and people who wanted to make sure that anyone could train, white, black, whoever.  Those two camps became very polarized and, the truth is, none of those people are training now.  For me, when I looked around I realized that no one was left.  It ended up being a big transition for me, realizing you can spend all kinds of energy worrying if all the people in your group look the same or acts the same or has dreadlocks or eats the same food or any of that. You just have to make sure you have quality people that can stay committed, can make sacrifices without complaining and can be consistent and can be depended on.  That’s how you figure out your go-to people.

   Clearly, I’m an African and this is an African Brazilian martial art and it’s only right that you have people who share that lineage, culture and connection and spiritual energy in your circle.  I’ve always wanted that and I still want that but that’s not the only component to creating a positive and workable energy and it took me a lot of time and thought to gain the maturity to recognize and understand that.  That was a big thing for me.

   From another perspective, in Brazil, nationality is very important.  But here I am, here you are and we both teach Capoeira Angola.  So, someone can flip the script and ask a similar question. “How do you feel being from the states and teaching Capoeira?” I know exactly how that feels and have had the experience of some Brazilians looking at me like “watchu talking about Willis?” and not understanding what right I have to connect with Capoeira on any deep level.

What does this mean for us?

The article below, taken from the Seattle Times, speaks about Yoga, as it is institutionalized in the PNW. But it raises important questions for those of us who practice Capoeira.

Something is being lost in Seattle’s yoga craze

By Sarah Stuteville

Special to The Seattle Times

“You have an Indian yoga teacher?” My friend asked with surprise when I mentioned Sweta Saraogi’s name in conversation, “I’ve never met an Indian yoga teacher before.”

If you’re not into the Seattle yoga scene that statement might come as a shock — given yoga’s spiritual, historical and cultural roots in India.

But if you’ve practiced yoga in this city for as long as I have (almost eight years) you know what my friend is talking about. Not only are yoga teachers rarely Indian, they’re most often white.

“That’s the face of yoga,” says Saraogi, sitting in the fitness studio of her apartment building where she teaches private sessions, “A thin, white, blonde ... American teacher who can do crazy pretzel moves and pass for a supermodel.”

Saraogi, who grew up in Mumbai and has spent time studying yoga in India, says a lack of diversity in American yoga culture is only part of her critique.

She also struggles with how exercise-oriented yoga has become in America — a “hard-core fitness” and “sweat it out” attitude that she says commercializes an inherently spiritual practice.

She trained as an instructor in the Midwest and says that when she tried to include elements like chanting or philosophy in her classes she often was told it was intimidating — especially coming from an Indian woman who may be perceived as too serious or too religious in her approach.

“In Chicago, most of the time I was pushed back even if I tried to chant ‘Om’ (a common Hindu mantra),” says Saraogi, who is quick to add that she was raised Hindu, but identifies as spiritual, not as religious. “Indirectly I was told, ‘You need to back off ... We don’t want to scare people with your chanting and your (skin) color.’ ”

It’s always complicated to practice or teach yoga as an Indian or Indian American in the United States, says Gita Mehrotra, who has practiced yoga for years and recently finished a teacher training.

Mehrotra feels alienated by yoga that ignores cultural and spiritual elements of the practice, but is also offended by the use of Hindu religious symbols and religious chanting by yoga studios full of non-Indians.

“You would never ask a room full of people to recite the Lord’s Prayer without context, or giving (people) a choice of whether or not they’d like to participate,” says Mehrotra, referencing the Sanskrit chants and prayers often incorporated into yoga classes. “Especially in Seattle, a lot of yoga studios take a kind of uncritical approach to using ... Hinduism as part of their yoga studio and what they are selling.”

In response to this and other examples of a yoga culture that felt unwelcoming, Mehrotra helped co-found POC Yoga, an organization in Seattle that provides weekly classes and regular teacher workshops for people of color while also contextualizing yoga’s Indian roots.

Saraogi has forged her own path as well. Tired of fighting to fit into the existing scene, she’s started teaching private classes to clients (I’ve taken three myself). She says many of her clients feel uncomfortable in standard yoga classes, whether because of their body type, gender, race or culture, and prefer taking private lessons with her.

Yoga has long been a positive part of my life but I’ll fess up: I’ve chanted a lot of Sanskrit words I didn’t understand and have been to only a few classes taught by a person of color. So how can the practice be more authentic and inclusive in a city where yoga studios are becoming almost as common as coffee shops?

Saraogi and Mehrotra both say it isn’t about excluding anyone, but instead about finding ways to include different types of people in yoga culture. Oh, and taking the time to notice that you’re engaging in an ancient practice that took a long and, sometimes strange, journey to your neighborhood studio.

“I don’t feel like it’s an easy fix and I don’t have an answer about it,” says Mehrotra, “But I think there’s something about acknowledging that it’s complicated that would go a long way.

I know it just got more complicated for me.

Sarah Stuteville is a multimedia journalist and co-founder of The Seattle Globalist, www.seattleglobalist.com, a news site covering Seattle's international connections. Sarah Stuteville: sarah@seattleglobalist.com. Twitter @SeaStute

Keywords

I am representing an article over at Capoeira Connection (a website that i greatly recommend!)

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While in Salvador, I made a list of the “key words” that Mestre Valmir and his students emphasized with frequency in the trainings. Here they are, as well as an explanation of more or less what they mean:

Awareness – Visualization

Being conscious of the position of your body and the position of the other player’s. Knowing the length and reach of your attacks, so that you don’t give any that are out of range. Being aware of your possible openings. “Seeing” the movements.
The opposite is, for example, thinking you’ve done something clever by giving a fully extended chapa that arrives within an inch of the other player’s exposed face. You’ve done nothing; you couldn’t hit the other player if you tried… unless you’re Inspector Gadget and can mechanically elongate your leg. In reality that point goes to the other player, because they perceived the length of your leg and backed away just out of your reach.
Another example is being oblivious to points the other player scores on you: when they subtly mark a rasteira or cabeçada or whatever, and everyone else in the roda but you sees that you’ve been had. A classic example of this is when some newbie starts a kick, the professor marks a rasteira, and the newbie doesn’t notice; he follows through and kicks the professor, not realizing that if the professor had actually done the rasteira, he’d be in no condition to kick.

Tranquility – Calmness – Patience – Control

Staying chill in the roda. Not just avoiding anger, but also overexcitement and over-eagerness to “get” the other player. Having perfect control of your body: not hitting the other player by accident or falling out of a movement when you didn’t intend to. If you get a point scored on you, you don’t try to get your revenge right away; instead you wait, develop the game, make the other player think you’ve forgotten, and then get him. Maybe not even in the same game… maybe your revenge comes a week or a year or even a decade later.
The opposite of this is getting worked up, responding to receiving a rasteira or blow with an immediate attempt to get the other player, doing jerky and uncontrolled movements, falling out of the roda or hitting the people sitting in it, having to rush to dodge the other player’s movements (this also has to do with lack of foresight to see them coming).

Cleverness – Deception

You must be able to deceive well; if you’re going to fake one movement but do another, the fake has to be really convincing in order to provoke the response you want from the other player. You should be clever enough to note weaknesses in the other player’s game and take advantage of them. Cleverness is also the defense; you should be able to anticipate the other player’s attacks in order to successfully dodge. Never telegraph a movement; try to keep the other player guessing. The ginga, especially, should have tons of flourishes, fakes, turns – it’s a completely un-patterned matrix of movement, not a repetitive back-and-forth step.

Rhythm – Expression – Feeling – Soul – ‘From the heart’

There is no right or wrong in capoeira, only consequences. Capoeira angola has no perfectionist technical standards; you’re free to do the movements with your own personal expression, in the way that is best for your body. Your movements will be most effective if you do them to the rhythm of the berimbau. And do them with feeling, with “soul” – have fun! Let the joy of capoeira show through in the way you move your body… dance to the berimbau’s beat. The opposite: moving and playing tensely or drudgingly, looking as though you didn’t even like capoeira.

Relaxation – Looseness – Lightness – Smoothness – Respiration

Angoleiros keep themselves completely relaxed, because this allows them to have the most mobility. Feet step lightly on the ground, arms move smoothly/naturally and are not held firmly in one position. Their bodies are loose, not rigid, giving them minimum commitment and maximum adaptability. The opposite: stepping firmly, holding arms rigidly or moving them jerkily, being stuck to the ground, having plodding movements, over-committing to movements.

Freedom of movement – Mobility – Balance within unbalance

Since capoeiristas constantly have to predict and respond to the unpredictable, they need as much mobility and adaptability as possible. They have to be able to go in any direction at any time; any movement must be able to be desfeito (literally “un-done”), aborted or changed at any moment during its entrance, execution, or exit. The angoleiro’s balance does not come from a stationary stance, but from being in motion (like riding a bike – you can only stay upright when the bike is in motion); she might look like she’s careening around the roda out of control or like she never has a foot firmly on the ground, but in fact she has perfect control and balance – without, in fact, ever having a foot “firmly” on the ground! Angoleiros stay on the balls of their feet as much as possible in order to have more mobility.

Naturalness – Subtlety

There’s no need for exaggeration or over-acting. You should be clever but not look like you’re trying hard to be (that’ll just make you look like a wise guy who mistakenly thinks he’s a mandingueiro). Angoleiros will mark attacks without calling a ton of attention to it; the point might even go unnoticed by many who don’t know how to “see” the exchanges in capoeira angola. I think it’s less the movements themselves and more a mental posture that shows through in the movements (an attitude of humility vs. one of “I’m going to show everyone how clever I am!”)

Objectivity – Protection

All movements must have purpose; either to attack one of the other player’s vulnerable areas or maneuver her into a position in which you can attack them. The back, legs, and arms are not particularly vulnerable, whereas the face, chest, and abdomen are. You get absolutely no points if you tag your opponent with a kick to their back or leg… in fact, doing so demonstrates that you couldn’t crack open their game and the best you could do was take a cheap and useless shot at a non-vulnerable part of their body.
Some angoleiros, when hit with such a blow, will make a show of dusting off the area with a look of disdain on their face that says “oh come on… what a pathetic attack.” At the same time you are trying to control the other player, you must take care to protect your own openings. This protection, in capoeira angola, should be flexible and mobile rather than fixed and rigid.
There are two errors people make regarding objectivity. One is having too little – this is exemplified by giving kicks over someone who’s already dodging, giving attacks that are out of range, and doing movements that serve absolutely no purpose. The other is having too much – this is exemplified by going for cheap shots ALL the time, keeping yourself permanently closed (as opposed to opening and closing, or appearing open when you are really protected), and making it obvious that your chief goal is to get the other player.

The roda of life

Below is the translation of another text i found on the website of grupo Nzinga:

"Grande Roda" (large/great circle)

The 'Grande Roda', as angoleiros call it, is the society in which we live, with all of its conflicts and contradictions.
The same principles that we reflect on and practice in the "Pequena Roda" (the 'little' roda of capoeira) apply to the Grande Roda. These principles include, primarily, a collective struggle against oppression, with its base in solidarity and resilience/resistance. The history of Capoeira is a portrait of this struggle, from its origins in the plantations, mines, and docks built with the labor of men and women from Africa, to the stigmas and sterotypes that it confronts today as a symbol of the cultural inheritance of people of African descent.
The trahjectory of struggle that we received from our ancestors, from Queen Nzinga to Mestre Pastinha, from the kilombos to the legacy of black culture, must be accepted and deepened. Capoeira Angola is militant - and as such it must never cease to oppose social injustice, and to move towards social transformation through reflection, protest and education.

The roots of capoeira angola

Mestre Cobra Mansa has been working on a documentary on the african roots of capoeira.

The video below is for the appeal for funding that they did some time ago - and it contains some amazing footage on its own, including Mestre Cobrinha playing some intense games against Mestre Moraes.

a bit of history and perspective

The article below was written by Mestra Paulinha, of Grupo Nzinga. I found it in the archives of the blog hosted by FICA DC.

In the beginning of the 1980s, the creation of the Grupo de Capoeira Angola Pelourinho (GCAP) in Rio de Janeiro and later in Bahia marked a significant change in the situation. Founded by Mestre Pedro Moraes Trinidade (Mestre Moraes), GCAP implemented a series of actions promoting the re-valorization of Capoeira Angola and the recognition of the importance of old and famous mestres, such as Mestre Pastinha himself. With an ideology that affirmed capoeira’s African roots and denounced the injustices suffered by so many capoeiristas and Afro-descendents, this group was the precursor of a movement that became wide and diverse.

Through the realization of events in homage to Mestre Pastinha, GCAP managed to reunite old practitioners of Capoeira Angola and attract new admirers and people interested in learning the traditional game. The format of these events was innovative because it created bridges between the practitioners of Capoeira Angola and other segments of society such as: religious leaders, especially those linked to the Candomblés of Angola; anti-racist organizations of the “black movement”; organizations involved with other forms of black culture; intellectuals and scholars; and governmental organizations, especially in the cultural area. In some years, these events gained larger proportions, assuming a national and international character, and began to be held by other nascent groups of Capoeira Angola, mainly during the 1990s. Such events were established as an important part of a regular calendar activities that helped to construct the new community of “angoleiros”.

One important aspect of the ideology and actions implemented by the Capoeira Angola groups created in this period involves the denunciation of racism in Brazil. The events promoted in memory of Mestre Pastinha, carried out on the date of his death (November 13th), soon became part of the agenda of commemorations and reflections of the National Day of Black Consciousness (November 20th). More than a coincidence of dates, this approximation reveals a process of growing politicization in the universe of Capoeira Angola, synchronized with the general trend in the black cultural scene in Bahia...

... This community became very heterogeneous – including people of various ethnic and racial origins, social classes, nationalities, genders, ages, and sexual orientations- and this has been the backdrop for the construction of the angoleiro’s identity. Therefore, affirming oneself as an “angoleiro(a)” today implies dealing with diversity, rejecting any ideal of purity and homogeneity.

An interview with Mestre Cobra Mansa

Mestre Cobra Mansa is the founder of FICA, and a great, wise elder. This is a great video with a little bit of his history, and his current project Kilombo Tenode.

What is a roda?

I found and translated this from the website of FICA-Salvador:

Played in a circle, Capoeira Angola is infinitely varied with unlimited combinations of movements that involve legs, arms, head, feet in the air, a smile and a spark in the player’s eyes. The game is completed by humor, grace, agility, and seriousness.

It is in the roda that the ritualistic aspects of capoeira angola are most represented. In training, the intention is to prepare the student physically so that they may put things into practice in the roda. Therefore, practice consists of trying the movements and the attacks that are used in the game, progressively introducing more complex movements, whose execution requires specific abilities (such as acrobatic moves, for example). Students acquire this muscle memory through repetition, with the goal of attaining an increasingly smooth execution, in the measure in which the student develops strength and equilibrium. Even when it is accompanied by music and singing, training is different from the roda because the goal will not be met during practice.

Training, only training, is not enough to be a capoeirista. The most important moment in becoming a capoeirista is the roda, and so it is imperative that students participate in rodas, even if only as spectators, even though they may not know how to play, how to sing, how to play the instruments. In this sense, practice sessions, music sessions, or occasional theoretical discussions about aspects of capoeira represent the path that lead to the roda, which is the most important event in the daily existence of the group, and the necessary condition for the existence of capoeira.

What Capoeira means to us

I found (and slightly paraphrased the English version of) a beautiful description of what Capoeira Angola is all about on the website of Grupo Nzinga.

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Capoeira Angola is an expression of the Afro-brazilian tradition based on exercises of group (co)existence. Its practice represents the bringing together of different cultural events that include dance, music, dramatization, play, game and spirituality.

In its ritual everyone participates and each person is fundamental and unique.

To play Capoeira Angola, the 'capoeiristas' make a circle representing the world with elements of order and mutual support: the instruments, the music, the songs, the foundations and ethics of the game.

In the space of the circle there is a dramatized fight that transforms potentially powerful blows into gestures that are contained exactly in the moment of touching the opponent. The individual's movements in this warrior-dance are strongly related to the movements of the other 'capoerista' in the game, in reflexive processes that enhances self-esteem and seeks to end stigmas.

Playing Capoeira Angola is a process of raising one's self-awareness; it is not limited to the physical activity and it seeks to restructure the individual starting from these collective experiences.

Thus, when practicing Capoeira Angola we intend to interact individually and collectively with the world, by participating in its social-cultural dynamics. So, in the education of the 'capoeirista', debate and reflection are as important as the physical training and playing.