Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

THE CONTEXT OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC 59
particular neighbourhoods. Each band had its champion fighters, or calinda kings and queens since some
women also took part in fights. According to Bridget Brereton,
The male stick-fighters were dressed in a silk shirt, long trousers with coloured buttons, a ribbon or
sash at the waist, and red scarves round the wrists. To accompany the stick-fights, special kalinda
songs were composed and sung by the band chantwelles (folk artists who led the bands), songs which
boasted of the band’s achievements in past battles and challenged rival stickmen to fight. They were
in minor key, usually in patois, with the chantwelles singing the stanzas and the followers shouting out
the refrain. At first, the songs were all accompanied by drums, and special drum codes were worked
out to tell fighters when to give a certain kind of blow, or when to retreat. 134
During carnival, in particular during the Canboulay procession, rival bands often started to fight each other.
State intervention in the 1870s culminated in the infamous battle between stick fighting bands and police
during the 1881 carnival, leading to the prohibition of Canboulay and any large assembly of stickmen in
1884. Trinidadian stick fighting further creolized (or, more precisely, ‘douglarized’) when thousands of
Indian migrants came to Trinidad in the second half of the nineteenth century, introducing their own stick
fighting styles. However, in recent years stick fighting has significantly declined, despite attempts by the
National Carnival Commission to revive it. 135
The development of stick fighting in Trinidad—so far the best-documented Caribbean martial art—offers
a number of important parallels with capoeira: the emphasis on synchronization between drummer and
fighter, rhythm and movements, the emergence of a specific, creolized ritual including challenge songs and
the constitution of gangs in an urban environment. There are also some important differences between the
two arts: unlike capoeira, the emphasis in stick fighting was less on playing, but more on achieving victory,
attained when the opponent’s head started to bleed. Furthermore, the urban context acquired significance only
at a later stage in Trinidad, whereas in Brazil, it seems to have been associated with capoeira from its very
beginning.
Maní, a combat game using fist fighting seems to have been widespread in nineteenth-and early twentiethcentury
Cuba, especially in the central areas of the island where sugar cane was grown. Fernando Ortiz, to
whom we owe the only detailed description, defined maní as ‘consisting fundamentally in boxing, during
which the player who is dancing tries to knock down one of the various participants, who remain on the
defensive, and form a circle around him’. 136 It is usually referred to as a game, but also as a dance. In the
province of Las Villas it was also known as bambosá.
One game could have up to 20 participants, who made bets before the game started. Chance decided who
would be the first in the middle of the circle. Each player had his arms free, and balanced forward and
backward on his feet, with his legs wide open touching those of his neighbours. When the dancer in the
middle managed to hit one of the circle, so that he fell or left the circle, he was disqualified. Each manisero
had to keep on the defensive, and could only avoid or block the blows of the dancer:
The maní dance had no specific choreography. The dancer made the most varied and elegant figures
and changes with his gestures, steps and leaps, in order to show off and distract the individuals of the
circle, to mislead them over his intentions and take them by surprise.
Maní was always played during daytime and on ‘dead earth’. Various modes of playing existed: in the
‘clean maní’ contenders were only bare skinned. In the ‘grease maní’ (con grasa) they lubricated their
upper body, their arms and head with butter, which made the blows less powerful and resulted in less severe