Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

Series editor’s foreword
It was the ambition of the compilers of a recent general study of martial arts to record change over time. The
reason: ‘…some (martial arts) remained martial in nature; others metamorphosed into sport, performance
art, or discipline for self fulfilment.’ 1 ‘Thus it was important to present martial arts not as carvings in stone
but as reflection but as reflections in mirrors.’ 2 A praiseworthy ambition. Assunção achieves it more
impressively. The same compilers added that they covered Asians who adapted Western combative sports
and Westerners who turned simultaneously to Asian martial disciplines: ‘These descriptions coexist with
armies using martial arts to teach self-actualization, movie stars advertised as the world’s deadliest fighting
men, and churches using martial arts to teach children not to fight. Such contradictions [emphasis added]
are the nature of martial arts in the modern world.’ 3 Assunção handles such contradictions superbly.
To paraphrase Assunção, Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art deals with the
evolution of a martial arts tradition that has never been solidly uniform but over time has been fractured as a
consequence of the changing and competing agendas of adherents, advocates and enthusiasts. 4 Capoeira
does not shy away from consequent awkward complexities; it confronts tired clichés; it handles
contradictions with subtlety. Consequently, it is impressively authoritative. It bears the kitemark of quality.
It is set to be the subject’s locus classicus.
After consideration of the assumptions underpinning the history of the phenomenon, Capoeira follows a
well-marked chronological route from the very earliest to the most recent moments of a now increasingly
popular pastime: from its roots in Black Atlantic and Afro-Brazilian culture, through hybridity and
creolization, urbanization and controversial bifurcation in the 1930s, to its present blossoming as a
fashionable form of physical exercise and cultural expression. Today it is a global fad with its own jargon,
fanzines and websites. Googling for it (229,000 hits) reveals that it is catching up on Aikado (551,000 hits)
and Judo (899,00 hits) but still well behind Karate (1.5million hits). 5
In its original form in Brazil, capoeira was a form of confrontation of the politically strong by the
politically weak—a system of physical defence used by the weaponless slave in response to Brazilian
Machtpolitik. Assunção posits the view that the role of capoeira as a historical manifestation of resistance of
the powerless against the powerful as part of its attraction for modern youth. He may well have underestimated
its appeal. John Buchan wrote famously of causes which ennoble and those ennobled by them: ‘No
great cause is ever lost or ever won. The battle must always be renewed and the creed reinstated, and the
old formulas, once so potent a revelation, become only dim antiquarian echoes. But some things are
universal, catholic and undying…of which such formulas are the broken gleams. These do not age or pass
out of fashion for they symbolise eternal things. They are the guardians of the freedom of the human spirit,
the proof of what our mortal frailty can achieve.’ 6