The Origins of Capoeira

On April 22nd 1500 a Portuguese naval squadron commanded by Pedro Alves Cabral, arrived on the shores of the country we now call Brazil. Despite the presence of indigenous Indian inhabitants, the invaders officially “claimed” the land as Portuguese territory. After gaining the trust and the support of the local Indians, the Portuguese later deceive their new “friends” taking them captive as slaves to work in the building of a new colony. Capoeira has its roots in Central and West African cultures that were brought to Brazil through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. There are diverse theories about the origins of the art form. One of the most popular was introduced by Álbano Neves e Sousa in 1965.

This theory was subsequently adopted and developed by Luís da Câmara Cascudo in his book Folclore do Brasil in 1967. 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 ‘N’golo theory maintains that in the port of Benguela, and also once in Brasil, the dance developed into a foot-fighting style that was used by both bandits and slaves for defence and attack. The N’golo and its ‘cognates’ are argued to have been used by Africans and Afro-Brazilians to maintain themselves spiritually and physically under the harsh circumstances of slavery and plantation life. It developed mainly in three places: Recife, Rio de Janeiro, and the state of Bahia. While in the first two places, Capoeira was said to be violent, and had no music, in Bahia it became more of a ritualized game, with a strong musical element. It should be noted that much of what is known of Rio de Janeiro capoeira in the 1900s and earlier derives only from police reports, which naturally included no information about whether capoeira in Rio was done to music or not. Various police orders were given to search capoeiristas carrying instruments, usually ‘marimbas’, however.

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. Since the 1960s the N’golo theory has become popular amongst some practitioners of capoeira Angola, although it is not accepted by all scholars of the art form. Considerable academic discussion of the N’golo has occurred.

Some books which relate specifically to the origins of capoeira Angola and discuss the N’golo theory are: Nestor Capoeira’s: ‘Capoeira Roots of the Fight-Dance-Game’, Waldeloir Rego’s excellent: ‘Capoeira Angola Ensaio Socio-Etnografico’ (in Portuguese), Gerard Taylor’s in depth study of Capoeira’s African antecedents: ‘Capoeira The Jogo de Angola from Luanda to Cyberspace Volume One’, J. Lowell Lewis’s ‘Ring of Liberation’, Matthias Röhrig Assunção’s ‘Capoeira The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art’ and an interesting essay by, T.J Desch Obi in ‘Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora’ edited by Linda M. Heywood.

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.