T.J.Desch-Obi has suggested that the capoeira game as a whole derived from Central African practices. He
argues that the ritual circle (roda), as well as the cosmograms traced on the ground by capoeira players or
their anti-clockwise circling expressed Central African cosmovision, which linked combat to ancestor
worship and the ‘crossing of the kalunga’ (see Chapter 2).^69 This is a seductive hypothesis, especially in
view of the fact that since Manuel Querino capoeira in Bahia has been associated with the ‘Angolans’. Yet
despite recognizing Angolan ancestry, twentieth-century players in Bahia were unaware of that kind of
Central African meaning. Earlier practices by Angolans in Brazil may have involved that kind of ritual
framework for capoeira, but for the period under consideration here this was, at best, a layer so deeply
hidden that it was no longer made explicit under any circumstance. Thus it has never been mentioned by
any of the old mestres or observers prior to the ‘re-Africanization’ of the 1990s.
What then was the cultural meaning of the vadiação in its different social contexts? Luis Renato Vieira
suggested that the expressions used by the old mestres show how they identified with an ethos that was
diametrically opposed to the moral values predominant in Bahian society. ‘Vagrancy’ and ‘deception’ did
not have a negative meaning for them, but rather helped to construct a ‘second reality’, opposed to the
Western notion of rationality and efficiency. In the space of the roda, a different, cyclical conception of
time prevailed in opposition to the linear time ruling work relations. Each roda became a continuation of the
previous one, independently of the time span that lay between them. A capoeira could ‘keep’ an offensive kick
he had received in one roda and ‘charge’ only in a later game.^70 Sometimes years would lie between each
roda. As some old mestres teach: ‘the one who gave the kick forgets, but the one who took the kick will always
remember’.
If the original religious meanings of African combat games had been lost to a large extent in the vadiação,
what transcendental significance did it have for its practitioners? It is difficult to give an unequivocal
answer to this question. Certainly religion provided the basis for the spirituality expressed in capoeira. Yet,
as we have seen in Chapter 2, Brazil, and Salvador in particular, was home to several religious traditions
and practices. Popular religion consisted of the intertwined worship of a Christian God, Catholic saints,
Figure 4.9 Chamadas: Mestre Juvenal with a student (left); students of Mestre Juvenal (right) near Mercado Modelo in
the port area. Photos by Pierre Verger, 1946–7. By kind permission of the Pierre Verger Foundation.
112 THE CAPOEIRA SCENE IN BAHIA