Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

CONCLUSION 207
lamented that Europeans had unlearned how to crouch and considered it a gross mistake not to allow
children using the squatting position they naturally adopt. 2 Since capoeira allows adepts to (re)learn how to
crouch or walk on their hands it can also be understood as a practice that compensates for some of the
drawbacks of modernization.
The meaning of modern capoeira styles is not only a different emphasis on each aspect of the art (fight,
dance, theatre, game), but also to provide adepts with different answers to the same basic questions about
the meanings of past and present, and the right balance between continuity and change. Capoeira can thus
be viewed as a kind of discourse about fundamental philosophical issues, and the roda, styles and songs
provide the place for adepts to take position and engage in a dialogue with each other. Hence M.Camisa and
the Abadá group defend that innovation is necessary for the preservation of tradition. Their manifesto
asserts: ‘For capoeira and the chameleon, change is only to preserve its essence.’ 3 Other mestres express
very different views on the chameleon and use it for other colour metaphors of ‘race’ and nation. M.Moraes
for instance sings: ‘I am not a chameleon. But I can be full of colour. The lizard is Brazilian. He walks in
green and yellow’. 4 The game between players in the roda is thus mirrored at another level as a
philosophical dialogue between different positions regarding the fundamental issue of continuity and
change. Adepts thus use the ladainha as a meta-discourse about capoeira, and about the greater roda, or circle
of life.
One key reason why people today practise capoeira is simply that it is so much fun. Playing capoeira in a
roda always brought pleasure to adepts. This is true not only in terms of the thrill that every game provides,
but also in terms of an overall physical and mental good feeling. Doctors still have to provide more details
about how the ‘capoeira trance’ (transe capoeirano) stimulates the production of endorphines, but there is
little doubt that it enhances practitioners’ well being. The more transcendental meanings some adepts attach
to capoeira can equally help them to find to their own centre. Yet the kind of enjoyment practitioners look
for has changed over time. As a game (jogo or brincadeira) it traditionally expressed African derived or
Afro-Brazilian sociability, an incredibly efficient way to escape from the hardships of slavery or unskilled
and low paid ‘free’ labour. This African and slave derived way of playing has, to some extent, been
maintained in contemporary practice; but modernization has also significantly altered the meaning of the
diversion and the nature of the game.
Today capoeira, especially in its globalized forms, embodies almost to perfection a cool attitude, and that
is why the art is used to advertise mobile phones (another icon of coolness) or the BBC and ‘cool
Britannia’. A cool attitude clashes with what many mestres of the older generations teach, hence the
conflicts over the appropriation of the art by new groups of capoeira consumers. These generational
conflicts do not exclude some form of agreement over basic rules and the possibility to play together in a
roda. Practitioners of different styles, religious and political backgrounds will also agree that the roda helps
to concentrate and focus spiritual energy (axé). In that widest sense capoeira is—at least for the time being—
still a martial art, different from aerobics or bodybuilding activities that merely develop mechanical
functions of the body.
The consumer attitude clashes but also contradictorily combines with another fundamental meaning of
contemporary capoeira, the formation of identity. As we have seen throughout this book, identity politics
have always played a core role in the discussion of what capoeira is all about and in which direction it
should evolve. For many African-Americans (I use this term here in the wider meaning of people of African
ancestry in the Americas, not—as is the common usage—only in the United States), capoeira expresses the
bodily memory of Africans and their enslaved descendants. This view is also shared by many other people
who do not consider themselves to be of African ancestry. Thus capoeira simultaneously provides an
answer to the search for their own roots for black Brazilians, for Brazilians in general and for people of