from terminology to the berimbau,the primary musical instrument used to
provide accompaniment for the jôgo(“match” or “game”).
Scholar and practitioner J. Lowell Lewis maintains that capoeira man-
ifests an “undeniably African esthetic” by virtue of body mechanics and
music among other features (Lewis 1992, 18). The customary label for the
earliest form of the art, Capoeira Angola,pays homage to its legendary
African origins, usually in dances whose movements were converted to
martial applications. One candidate for the ancestor of capoeira is the
ngolo(zebra dance) performed by young Mucupe men of southern Angola
in conjunction with girls’ puberty rites. Robert Farris Thompson, perhaps
the strongest advocate of the theory of African origins, notes the similari-
ties between capoeira’s cabeçada(head-butt) and the ngwíndulu mu-tu
(striking with the head) of African Ki-Kongo.At any rate, some scholars
argue that the similarity among the various New World arts is due to com-
mon origin, generally somewhere in Bantu Africa.
Capoeiristaspractice to a beat that is set through various percussion
instruments, the most important of which is a musical bow with a gourd
resonator known as a berimbau. The rhythm that is developed by these in-
struments determines the cadence in the fight. There is a school of thought
among capoeira practitioners that the use of these musical instruments de-
veloped to hide the martial function of the physical movements from the
Portuguese overlords in Brazil. However, the historical foundations of
African arts noted above seem to argue that the use of musical accompani-
ment for martial arts practice is a strong tradition. This would make the
music used with capoeira part of a much older tradition.
Songs involving a leader and a response pattern are sung during play.
The words of these songs embody, for example, comments on capoeira in
general, insults directed toward various types of styles of play or types of
players, or biographical allusions to famous capoeiristas. The sense of
capoeira as a dance is established by this musical frame for the action and
completed by the movements taking place within the roda (Portuguese;
“wheel”—the circle of capoeira play). The basic stance of capoeira places
one foot forward in a lunging move with the corresponding hand forward
and the other back. There is, however, considerable variety in the execution
of the stance (both between individual players and between the Regional
and the Angola traditions), and stances rapidly shift, with feet alternating
in time to the tempo of the musical accompaniment in a dancelike action
called a ginga.The techniques of capoeira rely heavily on kicks, many of
them embodied in spectacular cartwheels, somersaults, and handstands.
Players move from aerial techniques to low squatting postures accompa-
nied by sweeps or tripping moves. Evasion rather than blocking is used for
defense. Head-butts and hand strikes (using the open hand) complete the8 Africa and African America