dogmatic on the issue than some present-day angoleiros: ‘There are many stories about the origins of
capoeira which nobody knows if they are true or not. The game of the zebra is one of them’.^53
At the same time Pastinha was and felt Brazilian, and also subscribed to the emerging nationalism that
characterized the whole period 1930–1985, during which the country was struggling against
underdevelopment and trying to find its place among other nations. That is why Pastinha saw capoeira as a
means to improve the health of the Brazilian people in general: ‘...our ideal of a perfect capoeira, cleaned
of mistakes, of a strong and healthy race that in a near future we will give to our beloved Brazil’.^54 In some
interviews he reaffirmed both the Angolan ancestry and the Brazilian-ness of capoeira:
Capoeira is not mine. It is from the African. Something from the Africans remained for me. I have
inherited something. I am the inheritor of the art of the Africans. But capoeira is Brazilian, it is a
national heritage.^55Given his own doubts and tbe different, and largely incompatible constraints and pressures from different
sides to make the story of capoeira fit in one particular master narrative, one should not wonder that the mestre
wisely avoided to give a clear cut answer:
When they ask me where capoeira comes from, I reply, I don’t know, because the mestres of my time,
they did not say it, it [capoeira] has so much complication [‘enredo’]. There are capoeiristas along all
beaches, and parishes...^56This statement was perfectly in line with his idea of capoeira as an initiatory process, where no definitive
answers are given to beginners or outsiders. It is from this background that one can understand the struggle
that Pastinha undertook patiently to establish the Angola style during his life. As I have tried to point out in
Chapter 4, the Bahian vadiação did constitute neither a unified practice nor a firmly established and
homogenous tradition. Perhaps Pastinha’s main contribution was to have re-invented both.
He consolidated the ‘tradition’ by formalizing the rules for a capoeira Angola game. As we have seen, he
deliberately chose not to introduce new kicks from other martial arts in order to preserve what he considered
to be the ‘characteristics’ of traditional capoeira. He rather wanted his students to improve their
understanding of the few ‘principal kicks’ (cabeçada, rasteira, rabo de arraia, chapa de frente, chapa de
costas, meia lua and cutilada de mão). Only then would they be able to grasp their complexity, and the
many variations that existed for each. These movements allowed for a proper jogo de dentro or ‘inner
game’—considered by Pastinha the main modality to develop endurance and malícia (cunning).^57
As a consequence, some moves—even though they might have been used in street rodas so far—had to
be banned. Especially high kicks (martelo, queixada—the latter being referred to as meia lua virada by
Pastinha) were frowned upon. Pastinha did however teach acrobatic balões to his students, even though be
does not seem to have used them for demonstrations.^58 One should however bear in mind that drawing tbe
boundary between the ‘allowed’ movements of the Angola style and the ‘forbidden’ kicks of the ‘de-
characterized’ capoeira did not happen without hesitations and corrections and still is an object of dispute
(see Chapter 7).
Regarding the music of capoeira Angola, Pastinha also made a conscious choice of what elements within
a much broader, and less formalized tradition and practice were to be maintained. He institutionalized the
existing ladainha, chula and corrido as the trilogy for a proper capoeira game. On the other hand he did not
feel it necessary to adopt the quadra, which, as a consequence, almost disappeared from capoeira Angola.^59
In other words, just like Bimba he simplified a more complex and contradictory practice. By determining
PASTINHA AND ANGOLA STYLE 157