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Welcome to Amazonas Capoeira Brighton |
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Capoeira is a 400-year-old martial art that blends music, dance, singing, and acrobatics to create a holistic approach to teaching self-defense. Originating in Africa, Capoeira was brought to Brazil by captured slaves from Angola. In this foreign land the Angolan people developed their practice into a method of defending themselves against their violent overlords. Because of their predicament, these enslaved people had to disguise their training as recreational song and dance.
The theory concerns a practice known as "N'golo," or the Dance of the Zebras. The movements of N'golo mimicked the movements of fighting zebras. The N'golo dance was practiced by young warriors competing for the hand of a young woman of marriagable age in a puberty rite known as efundula. The specific group cited by Neves e Sousa was the Mucupe (sometimes spelled Mucope) in Southern Angola. Whoever had a more impressive performance won the bride and was excused from having to pay a dowry.
The Bahian style of the late 19th and early 20th century became what is today referred to as Capoeira Angola. The term Capoeira Regional, on the other hand, was originally popularized by Mestre Bimba in the 1930s in an attempt to differentiate this newer style from the older form of Capoeira Angola. Mestre Pastinha was the founding Mestre of Brazil's first officially recognized capoeira Angola academy, the 'Centro Esportivo de Capoeira Angola', which was originated in 1941 and gained government recognition in 1952. This was the start of the domestication of the street culture of Capoeira Angola
The game of o jogo de Capoeira Angola is a ritualized mock combat that is played with two players within a ring of people, known as a roda (pronounced "hoda"). The game is played to music, which is played by people who form one side of the roda. The musicians form the bateria which is normally composed of other players of the game, rather than specific band members. The objectives of the game are vague, and are largely dependent on the outcomes that are desired by the two players and the person who is in charge of the roda (usually the Mestre). In other words, there is no official winner or loser of the game |
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