Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

56 THE CONTEXT OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC
machetes, and knives. During carnival real fights occurred between groups from rival dance teams. Under
these conditions of street fighting, bassula was called ji nvunda, a Kimbundu term for conflict or fight.
Bassula de kissoko represented another modality, ‘just for fun and sport’. It was played between friends of
the same kissoko (a group of close friends and relatives) as a form of entertainment, or during a familiar
ceremony, for example between a father and his new son-in-law. Different fishing communities also
organized tournaments between themselves.
Although some aspects of bassula—especially its social context—bear a resemblance to capoeira, it
would be extremely hazardous to consider that art as an ancestor of capoeira. First of all, in terms of movements
there is no great similarity, maybe with the exception of head butts. Furthermore bassula seems to be of
recent origin, since the Axilunda are themselves a relatively modern ethnic group, the result of Bakongo and
Mbundu (Kimbundu speakers) miscegenation. Furthermore, as fishermen living along the coast they were
exposed to frequent contact with outsiders, such as sailors, from all over the world. Salas Neto for instance
recognized the influence of Asian martial arts on contemporary bassula. Therefore to assume that bassula is
an ancestor of capoeira just because it is or was practised in Angola seems to indulge in the stereotype of a
strictly one-dimensional communication within the Black Atlantic, only from Africa to the Americas. Yet
given the extended and frequent contacts between Luanda and the Brazilian ports since the time of the slave
trade, one might as well conceive that it was rather capoeira that influenced bassula!
The multiplicity of fighting techniques in Africa corresponds to a bewildering variety of social contexts
for combat games. In pre-colonial times, war dances and other highly ritualized contexts were central to
their performance. With colonization, and the resulting loss of independent statehood, these contexts often
lost their relevance—just as they did for enslaved Africans in the Americas. 122 Existing twentieth-century
African combat games are thus as much the result of fundamental changes and developments as their New
World cousins. Older, pre-colonial forms are unfortunately seldom documented and thus conclusive
evidence of a monogenetic origin of capoeira is unlikely ever to appear. The comparison with other combat
games in a plantation context might provide further elements to evaluate how capoeira developed. The
similarity of contexts and resemblance of outcomes with respect to related combat games in the Americas
can help us to assess to what extent capoeira was exceptional, and typically Brazilian.
Combat games in American plantation societies
Since all slave-exporting areas in Africa sent captives to almost every region of Plantation America, one
should not be surprised to find the basic combat techniques—stick fighting, fist fighting, kicking and head
butting—in many different locations. Yet most captives from a specific region in Africa ‘tended to flow in
one dominant channel’, 123 and therefore the existence of a combat modality in one region was, at least
originally, closely linked to the pre-eminence of a particular African tradition. However, the massive
presence of any particular ethnic group cannot be considered as the only decisive factor for the survival and
development of these arts, since all of them either rapidly creolized (although in different ways and to
diverse degrees) or disappeared altogether.
If the precise geographic distribution of African-derived combat games in the Americas is, due to the lack
of sources, difficult to reconstruct for the period of slavery, there is no doubt that from a relatively early
stage slaves were fond of combat games. The earliest detailed account is probably from Richard Ligon in
seventeenth-century Barbados. He described slaves wrestling on Sunday afternoons in between dancing
sessions; sometimes two or three couples being engaged at the same time.