transformed into a weapon of attack and defence, which helped them to survive in a hostile
environment. [This is the] reason for its continuity in the urban context. The worst bandits of
Benguela are generally Muxilengues, which, in the cities, use the N’golo steps as a weapon. In
Luanda, these steps, possibly brought from the South, are called Bassula. Even in the name there is
something suggesting that the fight originated among the pastoral people of the South. Ba-ssula, those
from the South.^92That the musical bow (known as berimbau in Brazil) was also widely used among the herdsmen of that whole
region provided further evidence for Neves e Souza that n’golo was at the roots of capoeira. He
conveniently overlooked the fact that this instrument was never associated with n’golo or any other combat
game in Africa (see Figure 2.5). Câmara Cascudo went to Angola himself but was unable to see either the
n’golo or the bassula. He heard descriptions while there and insisted that weapons, in particular knives,
were never used in the athletic games. This allowed him to conclude that the Portuguese substantially
reformed capoeira by introducing the use of weapons (jackknives and sticks)—a rather questionable
deduction given the widespread use of daggers, fighting sticks and spears in African societies.
In his recent work T.J.Desch-Obi has further developed the n’golo hypothesis.^93 He uses a much wider
range of sources—from colonial chroniclers to oral history—to draw his broad picture of n’golo as the great
‘Bantu pugilistic tradition’ from which capoeira Angolo supposedly derived. There is no room here to
comment extensively on all his findings and I will limit myself to the points that are most relevant for the
history of capoeira. Although it is not made explicit in the references regarding his informants, his fieldwork
concentrates on Quilengues, the area where Neves e Souza already identified the existence of movements
Figure 2.5 An Angolan berimbau player. Drawing by A.Neves e Souza, 1965, from...Da minha África e do Brasil que
eu vi...(Luanda: n.p., n.d.). Courtesy of the National Library, Lisbon.
50 THE CONTEXT OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC