2 Capoeira in the context of the Black Atlantic
Despite controversies over the remote ‘roots’ of capoeira, and over what constitutes its ‘essence’, no one
actually doubts that the art in its present form developed out of the Brazilian context of colonial slave
culture. The contentious issue of capoeira origins can be placed in a broader, comparative perspective by
conceiving it as neither Brazilian nor African but rather as a transatlantic, creole development. The first
section of this chapter will thus introduce the reader to the controversial issue of creolization, and then
briefly examine the formation of slave, Afro-Brazilian and popular culture in Brazil. In order to explain
cultural continuity and change, I will focus first on the question of slave identity and the emergence of
African-derived nations in the Americas, and then look at some core manifestations of African, slave and
popular culture in Brazil. Afro-Brazilian religion (candomblé) and diversions (batuque) developed through
intense cultural circulation between various socio-ethnic groups whilst at the same time playing a core role
in the constitution of neo-African identities. My aim is to identify these complementary and even
contradictory aspects in the formation of Brazilian popular culture, which are best subsumed under the term
creolization. Creolization—in the wider meaning I am using here—entails processes of both fusion and
segmentation, as well as the relocation of particular practices in new contexts and more encompassing
manifestations. This discussion will help us to assess the creole features of capoeira and to consider what
complementary relationship it maintained with other cultural practices.
The second section will look at fighting techniques and combat games that developed on both sides of the
Black Atlantic. A discussion of the available information regarding historical forms will allow us to judge
the claim that capoeira constitutes an ‘extension’ of one single African martial art. Highlighting similarities
and differences with forms that developed elsewhere in the diaspora, in particular in the Caribbean, will
help us to appreciate better the formation of Brazilian capoeira. Locating capoeira within both the context of
martial arts in the diaspora and of wider Brazilian popular culture reveals the intense processes of
borrowing, re-invention and circulation through which the art emerged. This exploration into capoeira’s
broader context will also allow a better assessment of subsequent changes in formal aspects, social context
and the cultural meaning of the art.
African, slave and popular culture
The academic debate over the origins of slave culture has a long history, and is closely linked to identity
politics in the Black Atlantic. Already during the 1940s the US anthropologists E.Franklin Frazier and Melville
Herskovits exchanged arguments regarding the importance of the African heritage in the Americas.
According to Frazier, slaves had been stripped of their culture to the point that their African past had been
reduced to ‘forgotten memories’. Thus, in the view of Frazier and his followers, slave culture would mainly
be the result of a situation of oppression and the slaves’ adaptation to it. Herskovits, on the contrary, insisted