The rebirth of Angola
The extinction of capoeira Angola was predicted many times. During the 1930s Edison Carneiro anticipated
that capoeira Angola would ‘retreat towards the little hamlets of the coast’ and concluded that ‘sooner or
later, progress will give it the coup de grace’.^80 The CECA, under M.Pastinha and other angoleiros engaged
in the struggle for the preservation of the art, tried to reverse the trend during the 1940s and 1950s. The
Brazilian press nonetheless often indulged in obituaries for capoeira Angola. Already in 1962 A Tarde
wrote categorically—and inaccurately—that Angola ‘was no longer practised in the city of Salvador’.^81
When the Paulista magazine ‘Artes Marciais’, dedicated a special issue to capoeira in the 1980s, it presented
the tesoura and parada de angola under the heading ‘movements no longer used’.^82
Once Waldemar and Cobrinha Verde could no longer hold their traditional rodas and Pastinha had become
blind, the continuation of the Angola style seemed, once more, under real threat. Pastinha’s pupils João
Pequeno and João Grande, now mestres in their own right, continued instruction during the 1970s, but they
were swimming against the mainstream. Since capoeira Angola could no longer guarantee his subsistence,
João Grande stopped teaching it. He survived by working in a petrol station during the day and in a folklore
show for tourists at night. The producers of the show only wanted him to play the berimbau and dance, not
to show the movements of capoeira Angola—they thought tourists would be more interested in the flashier
acrobatics of Regional.^83 In a country obsessed with modernization, Regional seemed the only way
forward. Some of the remaining angoleiros started to make concessions to Regional, because they thought
that was the only way they could compete with Regional teachers. M.Canjiquinha among others went down
this line, and so did M.Bobó who took over Pastinha’s academy. Even M.João Pequeno started to hand out
coloured belts to his students (this is considered a clear mark of being ‘Regional’ today). As we have seen,
in Rio and São Paulo styles closer to Bimba’s Regional predominated, and most teachers stemming from an
Angola tradition also sought to adapt their teaching to the emerging ‘mixed’ style. If Angola was not
extinct, it was clearly on the defensive.
Things changed radically during the 1980s. The re-emergence of the Black Movement and the
revaluation of the Afro-Brazilian heritage in Brazilian society, most visibly in popular music (the blocos
afro in Bahia) and religion (‘re-Africanization’ of umbanda in the Southeast) provided the general
framework that made a renaissance of Angola possible.^84 If capoeira Angola was to overcome the image of
an art in extinction, only practised by elderly people, it still needed the dedicated engagement of a younger
generation. Mestre Moraes (Pedro Moraes Trindade, 1950-) and the GCAP played a crucial role in this
process. Moraes was born on the island of Maré in the Bay of All The Saints, one of those mythic places
praised in capoeira songs, and was brought up in Salvador. At the age of eight a neighbour took him to the
CECA, where he started to train under the direction of João Grande and João Pequeno. Moraes became a
marine and was transferred to Rio de Janeiro in the early 1970s.^85 In 1974 he was already teaching capoeira
Angola in the northern suburb of Belfort Roxo. He was also head of the group ‘Modá-Ruê’, which
instructed Cariocans in ‘Northeastern folklore’ such as maculelê, sambade roda, puxada de rede and even
‘African lament’ (‘lamento africano’).^86 What distinguished Moraes from many otber Bahians in Rio was that
he insisted in playing Angola even when confronting other styles, be it the apprentice fighters of Artur
Emídio or the fast guys from Senzala. His style struck capoeiristas as fundamentally different from
anything they had seen so far.
According to M.Marco Aurélio, at the time a beginner who later became one of Moraes’ students, news
spread that ‘an African was visiting the rodas of the city, who played a different capoeira’ [...] Visiting
capoeiristas from Salvador often got kicked in the face when they tried to play a more ritualistic, playful
game with the Cariocans mainly interested in efficiency. ‘The dominant idea asserted that Angola was like
capoeira Regional, only played slower and on the ground, with floreios’. When Moraes played, he did not
182 CONTEMPORARY CAPOEIRA