recognized authority in the Angola style, was a boxer.^163 M.Boa Gente (Vivaldo Rodrigues da Conceição) a
student of M.Gato from Bahia, practised taekwondo and became the Bahia free-style champion in 1974; he
was also made a mestre at Bimba’s academy where he taught for eight years. He is, nevertheless, still
recognized as an angoleiro and holds an office at the ABCA.^164 They, and some other mestres with a
recognized Angola lineage, adopted features identified as ‘Regional’. M.Canjiquinha and Paulo dos Anjos
used high kicks and belt graduations, and so do M.Nô and M.Macumba at present.
This raises two problems. First, the tricky issue of what the frame of reference for capoeira Angola
should be, M.Pastinha alone or the broader practice of vadiação? Second, to what extent can there be
innovation in capoeira Angola after Pastinha? Since Angola auto-defines itself as a traditionalist practice,
innovations are considered anathema amongst most angoleiros—which does not mean there are none. Yet
as we have seen in Chapter 6, Angola was an innovation using the trappings of tradition, and therefore shifts
and changes are hardly recognized as such. That is one of the reasons why there are arguments over what
constitutes the ‘genuine’ Angola. Since the Angola style was always developed in opposition to Regional,
there is a trend to eliminate, to ‘purify’ the style from everything that smells of Regional influence, even if
that in fact drives the style further away from the vadiação as it existed prior to Pastinha. In that sense, it is
true that there could be no Angola style without the negative reference of Regional.
Not only the practice of various modalities by some people, and constant individual shifts and broader
developments make assessment of capoeira styles difficult, but also the gap between self-definition and
ascription by others. Who deserves to be classified as angoleiro, for instance, is by no means
straightforward. Students of Pastinha, who became mestres themselves, are universally recognized as
constituting the hard core of the Angola style. The same applies to pupils of other famous mestres, such as
Cobrinha Verde or Waldemar. Yet beyond that nucleus exists a cloud of capoeiristas who assert to be
angoleiros as well. Their claim is challenged by the hard-core angoleiros on two grounds, genealogy and style.
The hard core insist that first of all a true angoleiro has to have learned from a mestre of capoeira Angola,
the only way to learn and be properly initiated to the art. Capoeiristas who have practised other styles for
many years and suddenly decide to swap to Angola are frowned upon as still being, in essence, ‘Regional’.
Some workshops with an Angola mestre, they insist, cannot replace the long apprenticeship a true angoleiro
has to go through, and will not eradicate the ‘vices’ implanted by years of practice in the Regional style.
M.Moraes even compared the need to have a mestre to a direct kinship relation in his ladainha: ‘Who has a
famous father/The son always talks about him/[...]Who has no father nor mestre, also has no tradition’.^165
If many practitioners therefore claim to be angoleiro, regardless of what the hard-core might think of that
assertion, the appeal to position oneself as Regional has clearly evolved in the opposite direction. During
the 1960s and 1970s M.Bimba was the key reference for many upcoming groups, but this posture seems to
have lost some of its momentum in the last decades. Relatively few groups claim to practise an unaltered,
Regional style. Probably the main reference here is Mestre Nenel, and his brothers Demerval and Luís, sons
of the late Bimba. The association ‘Sons of Bimba’ was created in 1986, and maintains training venues
around the city of Salvador. The group is also linked to the Mestre Bimba Foundation, which deals with the
broader legacy of Manoel dos Reis Machado. M.Nenel explicitly seeks to continue the work of his father,
and as a consequence, keeps as close as possible to teaching the ‘original’ Regional hallmarks. He and other
students of Bimba vehemently question the assumption that the contemporary, mainstream capoeira is
Regional.^166
Some other groups around the country also claim exclusive allegiance to Bimba, but it remains to be seen
to what extent that is verified in their everyday training and roda practice. The vast majority of
contemporary practitioners, however, affirm to be neither Angola nor Regional. Most mestres now adopt
what one could term an ecumenical approach, asserting, for example, that ‘there is only one capoeira’
CONTEMPORARY CAPOEIRA 199