capoeira movements. Other groups, in particular from capoeira Angola, consider that capoeira movements
in themselves are gymnastics and therefore can also be used to warm up.
A further aspect that differentiates groups is to what extent do teachers compel group members to learn
instruments and play the basic toques? Angoleiros typically want students to train to the music at all times,
in order to internalize the connection between rhythm and movement, and preferably to live music of the
orchestra rather than to scratched records or sound systems. Which rhythms are played in the roda? Some
mainstream groups tend to play exclusively fast and upright São Bento Grande, whilst others insist that
practitioners must be able to play various types of game, according to the rhythm of the berimbau, and use a
wide range of toques in their rodas.
Groups also differ widely over the rituals used in the roda and the extent students are required to know
them. It is easy to observe that many groups tend to develop their own rules regarding, for instance, the
order of the instruments within the orchestra, the way in which students ‘queue’ to play, and if, when and
how it is allowed to ‘buy’ a game.
Class and ethnic background constitute a further criterion to differentiate groups and styles and here one
is well advised not to take self-descriptions always for face value. Some groups, in particular from the Angola
style, often claim to represent black and lower-class constituencies, whilst depicting Regional practitioners
as white and middle class. Although I cannot produce statistical evidence, my own observations suggest
that in fact groups classed as ‘Regional’ can be as ‘black’ and ‘working class’ as any Angola group, and this
applies not only to Salvador and the Recôncavo, but equally to Rio de Janeiro or other cities. In contrast,
many Angola groups have a significant number of white and/or middle class members. In that respect one
has to take note of M.Miguel’s (from Grupo Cativeiro) critique of the ‘bourgeoisification’ of Angola in the
metropolis São Paulo:
There are those people who say that capoeira is not a sport, that it is a culture of resistance. But they
have no commitment with anything; it is the people from capoeira Angola. Today the capoeira Angola
in São Paulo is geared towards the elite; the angoleiros are in the middle class neighbourhoods.^171As we have seen, Cativeiro was a key actor in the process of ‘re-Africanization’ or ‘Angolization’ of
capoeira in São Paulo during the 1980s. In the 1990s some teachers from Bahia introduced what they
consider the genuine Angola style in the city, and thus clashed with Cativeiro’s claims.^172 Class is used here
as a device to polemicize with rival groups, just as elements of style are often perceived as representing
social or political differences. This raises the issue of to what extent capoeira, or specific substyles, are still
part of a specifically black or lower class ‘habitus’, and to what extent it can be transposed into other ethnic,
class, and gender contexts. In other words, can white middle class females move like black lower
classmales?^173
Capoeira groups differentiate themselves also with regards to how they see capoeira history and how
much emphasis they place on the need for practitioners to learn about it, in order to raise their
consciousness. The commitment to social and political work at grass root level—teaching capoeira to street
children for example—is much stronger in some groups than in others, where practice alone is seen as
somehow enough evidence for the mantra that ‘capoeira is resistance’.
The type of leadership is also another fundamental—even though often overlooked—aspect that
differentiates capoeira groups. ‘The mestres, these central figures of the capoeira world, are a kind of
mediators around which loyalties and more or less narrow and rigid hierarchies are constituted [...]’.^174
They are therefore at the core of a group’s identity and paramount to the relationship between groups and
with the wider society. Many mestres have outstanding personal qualities and have become charismatic
202 CONTEMPORARY CAPOEIRA