History of capoeira
The history of capoeira explores the origins and development of capoeira, a Brazilian martial art and game that combines dance, acrobatics, fighting, and music.
Capoeira first appeared among Africans in Brazil, during the early colonial period of the 18th century. There is a substantial debate about whether capoeira was created in its essence in West Africa, or whether it only became fully formed in Brazil. According to the old capoeira mestres and tradition within the community, capoeira originates from Angola, likely from the Mbundu people of the Kingdom of Ndongo. Ndondo was controlled by a formal military, in which Mbundu soldiers were trained professionally for combat. Therefore, these combat abilities would have been brought to Brazil with Mbundu people enslaved in the Atlantic Slave Trade. However, the exact of capoeira is not entirely clear, many studies have supported the oral tradition, identifying engolo as an ancestral art and locating the Cunene region as its birthplace. At the core of capoeira we find techniques developed in engolo, including crescent kicks, push kicks, sweeps, handstands, cartwheels, evasions and even the iconic meia lua de compasso, scorpion kick and L-kick. Some authors believe there were other ancestors and influences besides engolo.
Rio de Janeiro, the epicenter of capoeira in the 18th century, saw the development of an extremely violent style of capoeira carioca associated with gangs or maltas. This style included head-butts, kicking, punching, and knife-fighting, much of which entailed new innovations. That violent version of capoeira is now generally extinct.
In the early 1930s, Mestre Bimba reformed capoeira and developed the capoeira regional style. The government came to see capoeira as a socially acceptable sport. In 1941, Mestre Pastinha later founded his school where he cultivated the traditional capoeira Angola, distinguishing it from Mestre Bimba's reforms and the "national sport" approach. Despite their significant differences, both masters introduced major innovations – they moved training and rodas from the streets indoors, instituted the academia, prescribed uniforms, started to teach women, and presented capoeira to a broader audiences. In the 1970s, capoeira became more broadly accepted across Brazil and exported to the United States and other countries. In the 1980s, there was a revival of interest in its African roots.
16th and 17th centuries: Enslavement of Africans in Brazil
From the 16th century, Portuguese colonists began capturing slaves from Angola and transporting them to Brazil. In 1617, they established a colony in Benguela. In 1627 and 1628, they conducted two significant military campaigns into inland regions. One ventured towards the source of the Kunene River, while the other went to the central territories inhabited by the Kunene people, known for their martial arts. Some enslaved Angolans brought with them their traditional martial art, engolo.The main economic activity in colonial Brazil was the production of sugar cane. Portuguese colonists created large sugarcane farms called engenhos, employing slave labor. Slaves, living in inhumane conditions, were forced to work hard and often suffered physical punishment for small infractions.
However, escaped slaves began establishing their settlements in remote areas, which they called kilombo, which means "war camp" in the Kimbundu Bantu language. Portuguese sources indicate that it required more than one dragoon to capture a quilombo warrior, as they defended themselves with a "strangely moving fighting technique". The provincial governor declared "it is harder to defeat a quilombo than the Dutch invaders." Some quilombos grew to become independent states, with the largest one, Quilombo dos Palmares, becoming an African kingdom in the Western hemisphere that lasted nearly a century. Quilombos attracted fugitive slaves, Brazilian natives and even Europeans escaping the law. Everyday life in a quilombo offered freedom. Anibal Burlamaqui claimed that capoeira was born in the quilombos of Palmares, out of the need of Africans to defend themselves. However, their warriors fought with weapons, including firearms. Some other sources indicate that this multi-ethnic community, constantly threatened by Portuguese colonial troops, trained capoeira as an effective martial art. However, there is dispute as to whether capoeira or some forebear to it was practiced at Palmares.
Engolo roots
Oral tradition
Capoeira originated among Africans in Brazil and for a long time was transmitted exclusively within the Black community. There is a long-standing debate on the question of whether capoeira basically originated in West Africa, or whether it was substantively developed and formed by experiences and practices in Brazil.File:LocationAngola.svg|thumb|Portuguese Angola, known as Portuguese West Africa was the main source of African slaves to Brazil.
As with other Afro-Brazilian traditions, oral communication is the basis of the transmission of knowledge in capoeira. According to the old capoeira mestres and the oral tradition within the community, capoeira originates from Angola. The very name of Capoeira de Angola emphasizes the origin of the discipline. The older names including jogo de Angola or brincar de angola, also emphasize the Angolan origin. The names of the major capoeira rhythms all relate to Angola, and African references in the songs overwhelmingly refer to Angola. Both the capoeira drum and the musical bow with its style of play are clearly of Angolan provenance. In the 19th century, Pires de Almeida, João do Rio, Manuel Raimundo Querino all state that capoeira was brought from Angola to Rio. Mestre Pastinha, who learned capoeira from a teacher born in Angola, often said that the original art came from Angola: "Capoeira undoubtedly came to Brazil with the African slaves. It was a form of battle with unique characteristics that have been preserved to this day."
Contemporary research, interpretation, and historical reconstruction
It is now well documented that many core capoeira techniques, such as rasteira, rabo de arraia, chapa de frente, chapa de costas, meia lua de frente, scorpion kick, cartwheel kick, and many others, were developed within the African martial art engolo.In the mid-20th century, the painter Neves e Sousa brought detailed drawings of the n'golo from Angola to Brazil, showing that there is an art similar to capoeira in Angola. Ever since, many studies have supported the oral tradition, identifying engolo as an ancestral art and locating the Cunene region as its birthplace. No known martial art in the world shares a more common technical base of kicks with capoeira than engolo.
18th century: Spread of capoeira to cities and repression
One of the first descriptions of inverted kicks is from 18th-century Bahia. The Inquisition case reported of a free African named João, who had the ability to become "possessed" and communicate with the ancestors. To achieve this, he would have to "walk on one foot, throwing the other one violently over his shoulder."By the second half of the 18th century, engolo had become firmly established in Rio de Janeiro and other cities. The term playing angola was also used for the art, where both angola and engolo actually came from the same Bantu word. Among the Africans of Bahia, Angolan game was passed down as a kind of secret knowledge, which they did not share with others.
Any display of martial arts or even simple acrobatics among Black people was suspect and forbidden. During the 1780s, a free black individual in Rio was reported to the Inquisition for "witchcraft." One indicator of his role as a ritual specialist was his habit of hand walking.
File:Punishing negroes at Cathabouco, Rio de Janeiro.png|thumb|Punishing negroes at Cathabouco '', Rio de Janeiro, watercolor by Augustus Earle,
By the end of the 18th century, the Angolan fighting technique in Brazil started being referred to as capoeira, named after the clearings in the forest where freed slaves resides and practice its skills. The term "capoeira" is first mentioned in a judicial record from 1789. which reported how a young man named Adão was severely punished with 500 lashings for being capoeira:
Capoeira was practiced in senzalas'', on rural plantations and among urban black communities. Police records of capoeira practices existed since the end of 18th century in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Recife. The colonial government tried to suppress it by establishing severe physical punishments, including hunting down practitioners and killing them openly.
Debate regarding Brazilian influences and sources besides engolo
Many authors claim the origin of capoeira is unknown, viewing it as a melting pot of different arts and dances, created somewhere in Brazil. While in the past, many participants called the activity angola or brincar de angola, in formal documents it became known as "capoeiragem", with a practitioner being known as a "capoeira". Gradually, the art became known as capoeira, with a practitioner being called a capoeirista. By the late 19th century, some began to dispute its African origins. In 1886, Plácido de Abreu rejected the oral tradition because at that time a capoeira-like game was not known in Africa. In the early 20th century, capoeira was rebranded as Brazil's national sport and a specific national product. Even Brazilian politicians started talking of capoeira as a national product, "superior to other martial arts". However, not all authors embraced the new theory. Inezil Penna Marinho wrote in 1936 that capoeira was brought to Brazil by enslaved Bantus.believes that capoeira "is a synthesis of dances, fights and musical instruments from different cultures, from different African regions, created on Brazilian soil", primarily in 19th century. Although, he notes that capoeira, unlike some other folklore "created by simple people", is not simple at all. It is an extremely sophisticated art based on a philosophy "that flows from the rodas to everyday life". He opposes the theory that capoeira originated in any specific place in Brazil, because it appeared in many places in many different forms. He suggests that capoeira might be "a sort of archetype that existed in the African collective unconscious that then sprouted and materialized itself in Brazil."
T.J. Desch-Obi finds that engolo, a Buntu martial art developed in Angola, was transferred to Brazil similar to how modern martial arts are transmitted. Then, the evolution from engolo to capoeira took place within a relatively isolated context, because the Portuguese lacked other unarmed martial arts to blend with. While some punching and grappling techniques were used in street fights, they were not incorporated into the philosophy and aesthetics of capoeira. The sole new form incorporated was headbutting, derived from a distinct African practice jogo de cabeçadas. Contemporary capoeira remained firmly based on crescent and push kicks, inverted positions, sweeps, and acrobatic evasions inherited from engolo.
However, Matthias Röhrig Assunção's research indicates that the Nkhumbi are the sole ethnic group in Angola known for practicing engolo. He questions why a practice limited to such a small ethnic group would have spread so far in Brazil. He suggests that two hypotheses about capoeira's origin are plausible: First, it may have resulted from related Angolan combat games brought to Brazilian ports and merged into capoeira. However, there's no evidence of engolo-like practices among other Angolan groups. Alternatively, a small Nkhumbi group could have laid the foundation for capoeira, incorporating contributions from other Africans. This raises questions about how such a minority could influence a broader enslaved community, although similar cultural evolutions have occurred before.
While Desch-Obi suggests martial arts could spread with just a "few practitioners introduced to a region", for Assunção "capoeira is much more than engolo." In addition, he points out Moraingy, a combat game from Madagascar, as a potential influence on capoeira.
In addition, Maya Talmon-Chvaicer finds that West Central African fighting techniques, games, and dances likely influenced the development of capoeira in Brazil through the Atlantic slave trade from Congo-Angola.