International Capoeira Angola Foundation (FICA), for example, supports 11 affiliated groups in the United
States, Brazil and Europe. Topazio, with headquarters in Salvador, and nuclei in Europe, the United States
and different Latin American countries, claimed some 10,000 members in 1999.^119 Capoeira’Abadá
represents maybe the largest capoeira group to date, counting 20,000 members in 1996, and 25,000 in 1998,
spread over 25 Brazilian states and 16 countries in five continents.^120
The consequences of globalization are only starting to be fully appreciated. Students who do not know
the Portuguese language have obviously greater difficulty in singing and understanding the lyrics. Being
also unfamiliar with Afro-Brazilian rhythms, they struggle more to incorporate the capoeira toques into
their ginga. As a result, beginners and even intermediate students are often more reluctant to sing and play
instruments, and prefer to focus only on the flashy movements. That in return perpetuates the lack of
integration between music and movements, and the result is a rather awkward ginga without swing that
capoeira teachers struggle so hard to improve.
Yet, when capoeira is translated into other cultural contexts, cultural misunderstandings occur on both
sides. Recently migrated capoeira teachers often do not speak the host country’s language well, let alone
understand its culture. One example may help to explain my point. Mestre in Portuguese designates a
master in a trade, a handicraft or an art, and someone who teaches his skills to others. It expresses profound
respect for the person so addressed. Many capoeira teachers have translated it into English as ‘master’ and
require their students to call them so. Yet in English master also means the slave owner, whereas in
Portuguese another word, senhor (lord), is used for that purpose. I remember well one Caribbean friend
sarcastically commenting that his ancestors had suffered enough at the hands of f***ing masters and
therefore he would never call someone ‘his master’. This kind of misunderstanding occurs on an everyday
basis in capoeira classes around the world and ‘makes the learning process slower and more difficult’.^121 On
the other side, many Brazilian mestres insist not only that foreigners can learn capoeira, but that an
increasing number of them are becoming quite good at it.
The capoeira teacher has become a Brazilian export product, alongside the mulata that dances samba, the
musician and the footballer. His role abroad has also changed, because here he becomes a specialist of all
things Brazilian. He thus not only explains what capoeira is, but how Brazil is. In that process, capoeira is
easily transformed into a commodity for people looking for an exotic kick. If capoeira has become an item
for consumption, then so has the capoeira teacher. Since many instructors are of black or mixed ancestry,
and usually have well-trained bodies, they easily fit into the cliché of the black super-male, and capoeira
into the cliché of black corporality. On the other side, a number of Brazilian instructors indulge in the
national obsession with blond women (a stereotype possibly derived from the inaccessibility of the white
slave owner’s wife). Thus teaching capoeira outside Brazil resulted in a complex and new dynamic between
male instructors and female students, which has resulted in some major cultural clashes but has also led to
important learning processes.
The core question that still needs to be addressed is to what extent the meaning of capoeira changes when
the art is exported and further removed from its original context. In Brazil, for instance, slavery not only
constitutes a painful heritage for every afrodescente, but also remains a meaningful reference for those who
are not, or do not consider themselves to be of African ancestry. Slavery is still alluded to frequently, and
thus needs little further explanation from a teacher when commenting on the origins or the meaning of
capoeira for slaves. The common heritage of slavery, on the other hand, constitutes the core reason why the
art is so attractive for other black people in the Diaspora. Some black practitioners in the United States even
argue that only black people can understand what capoeira really is about. As a consequence, some have
promoted a roda for blacks only that has created uneasiness with other practitioners.^122 A few black United
190 CONTEMPORARY CAPOEIRA