Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

40 THE CONTEXT OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC
Figure 2.1 Africans in Brazil played many instruments that have now disappeared to accompany rough dances and
combat games. Watercolour by P.Harro-Harring. By permission of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, Rio
de Janeiro.
manifestation; yet their presence does not exclude other contributions from elsewhere, especially in the case
of more encompassing and profane expressions of slave culture. For instance, single and double metal bells
were widely used in both West and Central Africa, and thus musical traditions from these two macroregions
reinforced each other in the New World. Known in Brazil under its Yoruba name, the agogô entered
candomblé, batuque and capoeira alike. The Brazilian berimbau derives from Central African music bows,
but the woven rattle (caxixi) that accompanies it in Brazil is likely to be of West African origin (see
Figure 2.2).
Figure 2.2 Many nineteenth-century painters documented the use of the berimbau among slaves, although never associated
it with combat games. ‘The Old African Orpheus “Oricongo”’, watercolour by Jean-Baptiste Debret. Courtesy of the
Museus Castro Maya—IPHAN/MinC, Rio de Janeiro.