Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

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Mestre Bimba and the development of ‘Regional’ style
Martial arts and modernity
From the 1930s onwards capoeira underwent major changes, largely due to the actions of some outstanding
individuals such as Mestres Bimba and Pastinha. To understand these transformations, which can be
subsumed under the label of modernization, they need to be placed in the context not only of Brazil, Afro-
Brazilian culture and the Black Atlantic, but also within the wider field of martial arts. Manoel dos Reis
Machado, or Mestre Bimba (1900–1974), belongs to a generation of black men and women who projected
their art to the foreground of Western culture in the 1920s and 1930s. In Bimba’s particular case, though,
the impact of his work on an international scale was delayed by almost half a century.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, some European musicians, such as Antonín Dvořák, drew
attention to the potential of African-American music, and cubist artists sought inspiration in African
sculptures. But it was only after World War I that African and African-American arts started to be
recognized in the West as contributors to modern culture rather than as expressions of ‘primitive’ societies.
These developments were obvious in the United States, where the Charleston and Jazz spread not only
among African Americans but conquered wider—middle-class and white—audiences, and where the art of
the Harlem renaissance linked cosmopolitan and modernist aspects to take pride in the African-American
heritage.
In the ‘Old World’, the devastation of World War I had demonstrated to Europeans that civilization and
barbarity were not mutually exclusive. After years of deprivation they were craving for vital energy which
only ‘primitive’ cultures seemed able to offer. No wonder, then, that African-American music and the
outstanding dance performance of Josephine Baker conquered the French public in 1925 with ‘La Revue
Nègre’. 1 Since Brazilian elites closely monitored French trends, they did not fail to register the fashion of
‘primitivism’ and the ‘blackening of Paris’. In Brazil itself, the Modernist movement, launched in 1922, put
the search for the popular roots of ‘Brazil-ness’ back on the agenda and contributed to a positive
reassessment of the African heritage. Even if it is not very likely that Bimba knew much about these
developments, they had an indirect impact on his work, because they contributed to ease the re-evaluation
of the African heritage in Bahia during the 1930s and beyond.
Yet if Bimba could be seen as a figurehead of an alternative, black modernization in Brazil, he equally
belonged to a generation of Brazilians who developed art forms that contributed to make the country a
nation. He was the contemporary of the composer Noel Rosa (1910–1937), the writer Mário de Andrade
(1893–1945), the painter Candido Portinari (1903–1962), who, among others, all played an important part in
the development of art forms perceived as truly Brazilian.