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Holistic Living
Capoeira is Liberation and Freedom
by Daphne Carpenter
I sat in silence before a blank computer screen, waiting for the words to come. There was so much I wanted to share, but as I contemplated the first brush stroke to the electronic canvas, I was paralyzed by what I had discovered. My mind was flooded with horrific images—naked African slaves in subhuman bondage, being thrown overboard the slave ships, alongside the dead. They had become ill during the Middle Passage of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade on their way to be sold as slaves in the “New World.” They were infected with European diseases against which they had no immunity.
Terrified and pleading for life, women and men were chained together and anchored at their feet. In these last moments, the prisoners were mercilessly tossed overboard so as not to infect the others. In better days, they held their newborn babies in their arms, danced freely, and practiced their own nature-respecting religions.
After several blank moments in my comfortable environment, sipping on a warm maté and listening to the birds outside—free like a bird myself—I came back to my body and finally the words came to me.
Imagine this: You’re walking along the street, or maybe down the beach on a beautiful day, when your eyes are drawn towards a flurry of incomprehensible movement. You hear a drumbeat, accompanied by a strange sounding instrument you’ve never heard before.
From where you are, you still can’t see exactly what’s happening. But the excitement inside you is building. The movement is encircled by a group of people dressed in white—clapping their hands, singing energetically “la-la-eh, la-la-eh,” and invoking an air around them that reaches out and practically grabs you. Magnetically drawn to this nucleus of vibrant energy, you walk closer towards it.
Inside the circle, or roda, two players are dancing, kicking and dodging, while flying acrobatically through the air. Back and forth, they exchange kicks (with little or no contact) while spiraling around and maneuvering themselves smoothly, almost effortlessly out of the way. The hypnotic flow of movement is orchestrated by the rhythm of the atabaque (drum), the pandeiro (tambourine), and the berimbau (a single-string percussion instrument).
By synchronistic meeting, you’ve encountered capoeira—a time honored Afro-Brazilian fight-dance—and as far as you can tell, everyone else can feel its pulse.
I started playing capoeira a couple years ago at the request of my soul. I didn’t question it at the time; the dance had just beckoned me. But the more I played, the more it all began to make sense. The instruments, the rhythms, the ritual—all the elements of the jogo (game) were speaking to me. The dance had seized my heart.
At first, the movements seem unattainable, almost impossible, as if they are a test to your soul. You move left when you should be moving right. You’re ducking directly into the kick when you should be moving away from it. You feel enslaved by your body’s limitations.
You ask yourself, what’s a quexiada? As everyone fluidly dances their way into this basic kick, you are the only one to interrupt the rhythm and flow of the class.
“Ginga, Ginga” calls the mestre or mestra, (teacher) and if you speak Spanish, you confuse the instruction to rock back and forth in this signature movement with profanity.
A feeling of humility spreads across your body because your Ginga is awkward. Your face becomes crimson, redder than it already was from this fast-paced workout that you’re not used to.
It’s frustrating, but you’re strong enough to resist. You finally shut off that voice in your brain that repeats, “I can’t do this.” You want to be the one dancing your way around the roda, executing your most polished quexiada, as if you could do it in your sleep. You want to break free from the mental and physical slavery.
And this is the essence of capoeira—liberation. Freedom is how it all began.
One of the oldest capoeira tales is that of a quilombo—a settlement of run-away and freeborn slaves. In the 1600s, 40 slaves rebelled against the slave owners on a plantation. They killed the Europeans in charge and escaped to the mountains where they formed the first quilombo. The community was named Palmares, for the abundant, sky-reaching palm trees.
In this new setting, Africans learned each other’s dances, rituals, customs, religions, and games, while still resisting the homogenization of African culture. Through this fusion of elements came capoeira in its earliest form.
“Capoeira is life. It’s a reflection of life. How you react and dance in the roda is how you react and dance to the rhythm of life,” says Mestre Jamaica of Capoeira Tribu Unida in Bahia, Brazil. He’s referring to how, in the capoeira world, it’s known that aspects of a player’s personality are unearthed and demonstrated in the roda, which is itself a microcosm.
Back on the plantations, when slave owners became aware that this new fight style was being practiced, they declared it forbidden. It’s said that the early capoeiristas learned to camouflage the forbidden fight with singing and clapping, as though it were simply entertainment. But it evolved into a new fight style which was practiced with ritual.
“Capoeira never denied its African roots, where dance and fight were always accompanied with ceremony and ritual,” affirms Professor Versatil of Capoeira Batuque, the longest standing capoeira academy in Southern California.
He says that many people mistakenly think that the dance element of capoeira was used to conceal its practice. But to say that would be to deny West African influence over the martial art, which incorporated ritual and dance. The game is played by using mostly the legs and feet to attack, and the arms and hands to defend. “[This is] based on Congolese martial arts theories that the hands are for building and the feet are for destroying,” explains Versatil.
When the Portuguese invaders pressed forward into the quilombos in an attempt to re-gather their lost workforce and subdue rebellion, Africans continued to fight back with a system of fighting called “jungle war.” The new, more-defined capoeira style was used as the key element in the attacks. As a form of defense, it was deadly. The art continued to incite unrest and revolution amongst the slaves and was subsequently declared illegal by the Brazilian government in the late 1800s.
“From what Mestre Bimba told me, black men, who were street capoeiristas, used to be tied to the tail of a horse that was let loose to run back to the military barracks,” says Americano (Muniz Sodré) in the film, Mestre Bimba: A Capoeira Iluminada.
Mestre Bimba, who lived from 1899 to 1974, was the founder of Capoeira Regional, a more modern style, where movements are generally faster and more aerially acrobatic. He was responsible for the legalization of the martial art in the late 1930s, after performing a demonstration of his style for (and at the request of) the Brazilian president.
It wasn’t long before the Brazilian government realized the potential for this martial art. It was legalized and the “black capoeirista militia,” which had formed when capoeiristas went underground during prohibition, was sent by the government to the front lines of battle.
“For some of you, capoeira is starting to get into your blood,” Formando Navalzinho Mumia of Capoeira Brasil Long Beach used to say as we trained like dedicated soldiers at the studio. What is it about capoeira that makes practitioners and so many people coming across it for the first time want it so badly?
Marla Dae says that the martial art is what’s kept her alive during difficult periods in her life—like when her teenage daughter was a runaway and when her marriage was disintegrating. Dae struggled to keep the house running, put food on the table, and shelter her younger son from the effects of their negative environment.
“I’m a warrior and I always will be. But I also never fail to see the beauty in things and I never forget where I came from.” Just as the African slaves continued to sing, dance, and fight amidst captivity, Dae lives by the same doctrine.
“It’s like saying, you can’t kill my spirit. The roda is where I take out my anger, sadness, ignorance and ego, and have it beaten out of me.” She says she appreciates the fact that in capoeira, “you need to learn the language, the songs, the instruments and the movement, and even in 25 years, you’ll still be learning.”
Capoeira has expanded and is practiced all over the world today. Its exotic flare, fusion of cultural elements, and the fact that it has helped people become free is perhaps what makes it so appealing.
In the roda, when everyone around you is singing songs of oppression and liberation, of slavery and freedom—and of love—your spirit soars. You are free. You know that you are participating in a dance built upon the bloodshed of slaves. Capoeira has outlasted the end of slavery and has never been eradicated. It’s celebrated with a sense of pride and continues to be a great symbol of resistance, freedom and liberation.
For more information, visit www.capoeiralongbeach.com, www.capoeirabrasil.com, or www.capoeirabatuque.org. Daphne Carpenter is most inspired by the potential to travel in order to help people where she can. She is a yoga instructor who is drawn to exotic foreign languages and spices, indigenous cultures and people who think that the best things in life are not things. Contact her at daphnestree@hotmail.com.