Brazil during the 16th century, the slaves sought to preserve
their identity and rebelled against the white owners by the escape or insubordination.
Capoeira is one of the most subtleand perennial forms
of this spirit of resistance. Even if the opinions diverge as for its origin,
it is more or less allowed that it takes its source in Angola, well before the
black-slave traffic.
Capoeira
- Illustration of J.M. Rugendas
Without weapons, the slaves created a
fighting art thus where only the feet intervened in order to be able to fight
the hands attached in the back.
Thus,
fight, dance, music and song mixed, with texts referring to the African past
or being ironical about the behavior of the white masters. The slave kept his
dignity all while preparing with the combat.
Like the other forms of expression from
african origin, such Candomblé or Samba, Capoeira
was prohibited at the end of the 19th century by the new Brazilian authorities
which saw there an offence, punishable by prison or exile.
However, it remained long-lived in clandestinity
and, when the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas is softened somewhat in the Thirties,
it re-appears in the cultural life of Brazil, being involved in other forms
with music and martial arts.
One of the first "Masters"
of Capoeira, Mestre Bimba, thus founded the first academy of
Capoeira in Salvador de Bahia, drawing from Jui Jitsu and Judo for
more effectiveness in the combat and created a more modern style, Capoeira
Regional, different from Capoeira traditional, known as Capoeira
of Angola.
Today, the Capoeira is regarded
as the Brazilian national sport and many schools are created throughout the
world, in particular in Europe.
Complete sport for the ones, strange
dance for the others, it keeps for the descendants of the slaves an essential
role, symbol of resistance to oppression and dignity of the black man.
This
ambiguity is also present in the term "Capoeira", indicating the farmyard,
the poultry or the field which one burns before next harvest.
Several
alternatives were born since, with the same common base : the basic movement
(Ginga), the omnipresent ritual (like Tico Tico Naranja), the
importance of the respect between the participants and the research of the "danger"
in the simulated fight.
The instruments most represented are the atabaque,
the agogos, the pandeiro and especially the berimbau,
musical arc with sonority enchanting and pointing out the song of a bird.
Like
the song, the percussive music holds a fundamental role in the play of Capoeira,
with particular rhythms for each phase of the dance, such São Bento
Grande or Axé Maria.
Transformed
or reinvented by the slaves, the ancestral fighting art developed, especially
in the North-East of Brazil.
It
was in addition imperative to hide from the esclavagists the true intention
of Capoeira ; it thus
took the form of a dance in the medium of a circle of musicians/singers.
This
fight was adapted to the places of combat, for example the tall grasses where
the new techniques made it possible to fight near the ground.
Since
the beginnings of the deportation of black people from Africa to
