Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

BIMBA AND ‘REGIONAL’ STYLE 143
lifestyle, the imposition of fines on students and other disciplinary measures were intended to impose new
patterns of behaviour, which contrasted with the ideal of ‘vagrancy’ so common among earlier
capoeiras. 101 Discipline was supposed to maximize the performance of his students. Given that at the same
time the military and the State attempted to instil a different pattern of behaviour among the lower classes,
reputedly ‘indolent’ and ‘uncontrolled’, there undoubtedly was a partial convergence of objectives with
Bimba’s teaching. That made Regional so attractive for various groups who dreamed of a ‘stronger’ Brazil.
Hence they tried to appropriate and co-opt capoeira after 1938. This does not mean that the style developed
by Bimba was inherently militaristic. In fact most teachers of other martial arts, in particular those from
Japan, also advocated similar ascetism.
The introduction of a formalized hierarchy among students, their separation into beginners, graduates and
advanced, represented another aspect of the modernization of capoeira. This was not necessarily a
Westernization, since again hierarchy is also paramount in the Eastern martial arts, which were introduced
to Brazil. A further crucial change that Bimba’s Regional introduced in capoeira practice was the shift of
emphasis from the roda to instruction. Whereas the roda represented the main activity in the older vadiação,
in modernized capoeira training became the overall aim. This corresponded to the shift of emphasis towards
the path (do) which occurred during the modernization of Japanese martial arts.
The crucial difference between Regional and the military-style gymnastics consisted in the aspects called
‘folklore’ in the LP recording Bimba made to support and publicize his teaching. This record juxtaposed the
ascetic rules of his school, the precise instruction in the eight training ‘sequences’ and the songs and toques
played in the roda, providing thus a bridge between the Afro-Brazilian past and what was becoming a modern
sport.
The suppression of some rituals such as the chamadas has been—correctly in my opinion—interpreted as
a loss of tradition. It seems undeniable that Bimba simplified the rituals of the game where he thought they
were not adequate for his purpose. Yet on the other side, Bimba did integrate some new elements that
originated from his deep immersion into Afro-Bahian culture. He maintained, for instance, the practice of
samba de roda as a complement to the rodas. More significant, however, was the creation of the new rituals
which became hallmarks of Regional style. The ‘graduation’ (formatura) was at least partly inspired by the
model of university graduations in Brazil, with all the formality of academic discourses and the distribution
of medals. Did Bimba think this would appeal more to his students with middle-class and academic
backgrounds or did he just wanted to make the whole ceremony appear more respectable? Both answers are
likely to be correct. Yet the rituals Bimba invented were also rooted in his everyday experience of
candomblé and traditional capoeira, as evidenced for instance in his requirement that students participate in
the game of stealing the table of the daughter of the saints (mesa de yaô) or the attribution of silk
scarves. 102 The introduction of colours to represent levels of hierarchy was rather a reproduction of Dr
Kano’s judo grades, themselves the result of the Westernization of Japanese martial arts. In other words, the
new rituals consisted in a complex fusion of elements from Afro-Bahian culture with Brazilian academic
rituals and other ingredients coming from abroad. 103 That is why it is inaccurate to qualify Bimba’s
Regional simply as a ‘whitened’ form of capoeira. It should rather be considered as an alternative, black
modernization, which differed in many fundamental aspects from the ‘whitening’ or ‘westernized’ model
proposed by Burlamaqui.
The broadening of capoeira’s audience constitutes another important aspect of the modernization brought
about by the Regional style, since what distinguishes modern from ancient sports is that everyone can
practise them. If Bimba’s role in the dissemination of capoeira is undisputed, the implications of that
process are much less clear. One certainly can claim—as Bimba’s students do—that capoeira ‘blackened’
the middle classes in cultural terms, thus contributing to the revalorization of the Afro-Brazilian culture in