Training for resistance
Very different from the African-Brazilian religious music described in the previous chapter is the music which accompanies the capoeira fighting game in Brazil. Capoeira is a martial art, providing a complete system of self-defence. It is also a sport. With its ‘dancelike, acrobatic movement style’ and its songs accompanied on the berimbau de barriga gourd-resonated single-string musical bow (usually known simply as berimbau) and often on various other instruments too, it is also ‘a kind of performance’. Nor is this all: it is ritual and drama besides, and has been described as a ‘theater of liberation’. And each of these essential aspects ‘comes to the fore at various moments during a typical event’.1
The tradition of training for a war of resistance in Angola dated from the first arrival of the Portuguese in the late fifteenth century.2 And originally,
accompanied by drums and handclapping, capoeira continued this tradition: it was a means whereby young black men in Brazil could learn and practise fighting skills in preparation for insurrection or guerrilla warfare against their oppressors. This early stage in the development of capoeira was illustrated by the German artist Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802–58) during his first visit to Brazil in 1821–25. He titled his picture ‘Jogar Capoëra ou danse de la guerre’ (Fig. 4).3This picture of a ‘war dance’ shows two young men who at first glance
seem to be squaring up to each other, while a musician sits astride a cylindrical drum whose skin he beats with his hands. On closer inspection however the protagonists are also clearly dancing, as are two of the spectators, one of whom is also clapping the rhythm. This ambiguity is at the very heart of the ‘capoeira game’.
According to Rugendas there were in fact two kinds of ‘military dance’ among black men in Brazil in the early nineteenth century. In the first variant, which seems to have closely resembled the calenda (or calinda) stick-fighting dance of Trinidad,4two groups armed with sticks stood face to face, and the object was
to dodge the opponent’s thrusts. From this may have evolved the present-day Bahian fighting game called maculêlê, practised with sticks but played in earnest
with matchets that emit showers of sparks as the steel blades clash, and said to resemble both initiation ceremonies in Angola and a sham stick-fight by men recorded in 1965 among the Ngumbi of south-western Angola.5 Rugendas describes the second variant thus:
The Negroes have another, much fiercer, war game, the Jogar capoera: two champions rush at each other, each trying to strike with his head the chest of the opponent he is aiming to knock down. The attack is thwarted by leaping sideways or by equally skilful parrying; but in springing at each other, pretty much like goats, they now and again butt each other’s heads very roughly; so one often sees jesting give place to anger, with the result that the sport is made bloody with blows and even with knives.6
28 RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE
Figure 4 Dance or fight? Capoeira is both – and performance, ritual and drama besides. In slavery days it prepared young black men in Brazil for insurrection or
guerrilla warfare against the Portuguese colonists. Rugendas shows capoeira accompanied by a drum in the 1820s, before the berimbau gourd-resonated musical bow became its chief accompaniment. (Moritz Rugendas, Malerische Reise
The unpaid – and on this matter uninformed – British vice-consul in Salvador, James Wetherell (1822–58), wrote in 1856:
Negroes fighting with their open hands is a frequent scene in the lower city. They seldom come to blows, or at least sufficient to cause any serious damage. A kick on the shins is about the most painful knock they give each other. They are full of action, capering and throwing their legs about like monkeys during their quarrels. It is a ludicrous sight.7
These references to ‘fighting with … open hands’ and ‘capering and throwing … legs about’ point unerringly to capoeira.
What Rugendas and Wetherell give us are of course merely outsiders’ impressions. It is clear from J. Lowell Lewis’s illuminating and enthralling account by a self-styled ‘semi-insider’8 (Ring of Liberation, 1992) that one of
capoeira’s chief functions is precisely to teach young men how to control their anger, whatever the provocation:
[C]apoeira teachers say that one should play with a ‘cool head’ …, which may be the survival of [an] African value … [S]uperior emotional control is an example of a kind of one-upmanship available to the slave, through which he could demonstrate his power over the master by making him angry and frustrated while the slave smiled inwardly.9
Yet the essence of capoeira lies not in keeping cool, important though that is, but in the appropriate and quick-witted use of malícia. This is not to be understood as malice but rather as cunning, ‘a lesson learned in slavery but still valuable in the modern world’.10 In capoeira, being cunning entails deceiving the expectations of the onlookers as well as of one’s opponent. And that includes being able both to feign anger and to throw off the pretence at the appropriate moment.
In Salvador and Rio de Janeiro there is a simplified variant of capoeira, known variously as pernada, batuque, batuque-boi and banda.11 In Recife there is a
modified, more individualistic, form of capoeira called passo, from which developed frevo, a frenetic, improvisatory and often comical carnival dance in which the participants carry open umbrellas.12 Besides the Trinidad calenda, analogues of capoeira elsewhere in the New World include the Martinique martial art called ladjia in the south of the island, damié in the north; its sister martial art in Guadeloupe, called chat’ou;13 the Cuban martial art known as maní or Bombosá, which may have died out;14a martial art known as ‘knocking and kicking’, reported from the Sea Islands off Georgia and South Carolina;15
and broma, a martial art practised by black men in Venezuela.16
The primary meaning of the word capoeira in Portuguese is ‘large chicken coop’, and it probably served Angolans in Brazil as a code word for their clandestine military training. There are similar-sounding words in Angolan languages: two possible sources, not necessarily mutually exclusive, are
Umbundu kupwila (‘to rush headlong into, to cause to fall’) and Kimbundu kapwela (‘to clap hands’).17Kubik comments:
If capoeira is indeed an Angolan word its coincidental phonemical identity with the Portuguese word meaning ‘chicken coop’ could have been accepted by the freedom fighters with a great laugh. In this case they could speak the word into the White Man’s face and enjoy the fact that he was only able to know the stupid meaning it had in his own language, unable to discover what it meant to the Angolans in Brazil.18
Though capoeira seems to have evolved into its present form in Brazil, many of its elements are clearly of African origin. For instance, the money game, where capoeiristas bend over backwards to pick up coins or notes from the ground with their lips, is identical to an acrobatic initiation ritual among the Makonde of Mozambique and coastal Tanzania.19 Again, there is a capoeira
‘flourish’ called relógio (‘clock’), where the player tucks his elbow into his side and spins his whole body on one hand, moving like the hand of a clock; similar figures are seen in several Mozambique dances.20 Acrobatic dances are part of male initiation ceremonies in many African ethnic groups. Several writers have noted striking similarities between capoeira and the ngolo zebra dance of the Mucope of Angola, who live near Luanda, and there is an oral tradition in Salvador according to which capoeira originated in just such an Angolan dance. A painting of the ngolo dance is proudly displayed on the wall of the Salvador building where a prominent local capoeira group works and plays.21Lewis calls
attention also to a young men’s dance among the Kuanyama Ambo – many of whom used to live in south Angola but moved south about 85 years ago to what is now Namibia – where the dancers jump out from their group and kick as high into the air as possible, to the admiration of the young women.22The traditional form of capoeira is properly called capoeira Angola, as opposed to the modified capoeira regional, and it uses many Angolan words in its songs.
But nowadays capoeira is by no means practised only by Brazilians of African descent. It has become part of general Brazilian culture. This was brought home to me when I spent a day in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Niterói with some friends of my daughter; after lunch, the teenage son and daughter of this middle-class family of European descent, knowing of my interest in capoeira, asked if I would like to see them perform it – or play it, for, as has been said, it is sport as well as performance. So they pushed back the furniture, put on a tape of berimbau music, and danced capoeira with immense grace and skill. They were attending a capoeira school on Saturday mornings, where they and scores of other young people in Niterói were learning to play both berimbau and capoeira. Nor is this a wholly new phenomenon: white people’s partici- pation in capoeira over the past hundred years or so has helped to check persecution and establish the practice as part of Brazilian national culture.23
Present-day capoeiristas indeed display a marked generosity and hospitality to all those from outside Bahian culture, including foreigners, who sincerely want to learn and master capoeira. Nowhere has this acceptance been more instructively described than in the story J. Lowell Lewis tells about himself in the preface to Ring of Liberation. It happened in the Bahian town of Santo Amero de Purificação, during a contest between an expert player, Mestre Nô, and a former pupil of his, Braulio, now himself a mestre:
Even though the masters had paused several times to find their wind, they were demonstrating extreme endurance given the intensity of their struggle and the difficulty of their moves … Experts and casual observers alike were fascinated with the variety of attacks and defenses, the beautiful yet deadly moves these two could improvise, and everyone wanted to see the resolution … [T]he audience had thrown quite a bit of paper money into the ring. If the players chose to, they could begin a variation of the game by competing to pick up the money, thereby claiming it for themselves. So far … they had been ignoring the money …
I myself was a fledgling player, a student of the older master for some months …
Without warning, Braulio did a cartwheel into the center … and picked up the pile of money with his mouth … The crowd exploded with laughter and approval ...
After some negotiations, Braulio was convinced to return the money to the center of the ring and the game was restarted … As they crouched there, Mestre Nô suddenly leaped backwards into a double backflip, lowering himself on the second revolution to pick up the money in his mouth. He came to rest on his haunches, mouth stuffed with bills, looking like the cat who ate the canary. This time it was Braulio’s turn to look sheepish as the crowd laughed approvingly. Excited and moved by this inspired trickery, without stopping to consider the consequences, I burst into song:
s[olo]: ô me dá o meu dinheiro oh give me my money, ô me dá o meu dinheiro oh give me my money, valentão tough guy,
ô me dá o meu dinheiro oh give me my money, valentão tough guy,
porque no meu dinheiro because on my money ninguém ponhe a mão nobody puts a hand
As I started singing, many of the players looked up to see who it was, especially since I obviously had a foreign accent. Although it is accepted for anyone to join in on a chorus in capoeira singing, even audience members who are not partic- ipating in the physical contest, usually only masters or respected senior players initiate songs, since the soloist must carry the song, giving a clear indication of pitch and rhythm. Therefore as I was ending the verse I became quite nervous as I realized what I had done. Would anyone respond to my call, or would they all keep silent, a snub to the pretentious foreign novice who dared to interfere in the creation of this exceptional game?
It was with relief and thankfulness, then, that I heard a full chorus come in on the refrain:
c[horus]: ô me dá o meu dinheiro oh give me my money, ô me dá o meu dinheiro oh give me my money, valentão tough guy
I didn’t try to continue the song for more than a few repetitions, since I realized that I only knew that one solo verse, but as I sang I understood that the reason the chorus had responded enthusiastically was that I had done the most important thing right. I had chosen an appropriate song to capture that moment in the game, to highlight the action and allow the audience and players a chance to express their delight in the quality of play.24
This anecdote illustrates the supreme importance of music in capoeira. But still more important than the songs commenting on the action is the accompani- ment provided on the berimbau, which is played throughout every contest.
African prototypes of the berimbau
A learned Frenchman once said loftily that the berimbau ‘could well be “ante- diluvian”’.25Those who regard it as a ‘primitive’ instrument should try playing
it. In an expert player’s hands it is capable of nuances which call for high skill and dedication. Properly called urucungo or berimbau de barriga (belly bow)26– to distinguish it from the berimbau de boca (mouth bow, for which see p. 168) and berimbau de bacia (basinbow, for which see p. 168–9) – it consists of a braced bow with a single string made from steel wire (in colonial times cord twisted from plant fibre was used).27The string is struck with a little stick (vaqueta or vareta), and the player has a small plaited rattle (caxixi) suspended from one finger of the playing hand. A gourd resonator is tied to the bow, and the player obtains subtle changes in timbre by pressing the open end of the gourd against chest or stomach at various angles and with various degrees of pressure, as well as by varying the distance between the body and the opening of the gourd, thus reinforcing certain harmonics.28Further variations in timbre are obtained by striking the string at different heights. Most players prefer to perform shirtless, since clothing absorbs much of the sound. The berimbau has eight basic notes, and changes in pitch are obtained by stopping the string, formerly with a coin, nowadays generally with a coin-shaped device (dobrão, literally ‘doubloon’).
Just as the elements of capoeira are clearly of African origin, so the berimbau, though it has evolved to its present form in Brazil, clearly derives from various Angolan gourd-resonated single-string musical bows played with a thin cane stick. It has several notable precursors.
According to Gerhard Kubik, who has done fieldwork in both Angola and Brazil, the mbulumbumba bow used by the Ngumbi and Handa of south-western
Angola is ‘virtually identical’ to the berimbau, though it is slightly smaller.29 It is made and tuned in the same way. And it is played in the same way: as with the berimbau, the musician produces ‘floating, vibrato sounds’ by slightly varying the pressure of the gourd against the chest and thus stressing certain harmonics.30Moreover, some of the basic patterns played are identical on both sides of the Atlantic, so that Bahian berimbau players, when Kubik played them tapes recorded in Angola, recognised and ‘understood’ what the Ngumbi musicians were doing. The only difference in playing practice is that ‘the Angolans stopped the string with the nail of the thumb in a kind of pincer movement of thumb and index finger, while the Brazilians had adopted a coin instead’.31This bow is known in Cuba as burumbumba,32and an Angolan bow
identified by that name was illustrated, with marimba xylophone and three- string kissumba pluriarc (compound bow-lute), in a travel book published in 1859.33
A broadly similar Angolan musical bow, the humbo or hungi of Luanda, was twice mentioned by the Portuguese traveller Ladislau Batalha (1856–c. 1939). In 1889 he wrote of it:
It generally consists of a half-calabash, hollow and well dried. It is bored in the middle at two adjacent points. They make separately a curved bow with a suitable string. They fasten the end of the bow to the calabash with a small piece of fibre string threaded through the two holes; then, leaning the instrument against the skin of the chest, which acts here as a sound-box, they make the bowstring vibrate by means of a small reed.34
In the following year Batalha told how he had heard one of these bows played by a ‘big Negro’ (negralhão); he described it as ‘a kind of guitar with only one string, for which the artist’s naked body serves as a sound-box’.35The humbo, which has been called a ‘twin brother’ of the berimbau,36has been documented
in Peru as well as Brazil.37Among the Mbunda of south Angola, a similar bow is called nhungo.38
A third such bow, the rucumbo, found among the Kongo-speaking peoples along the Angola-Congo border, was described and illustrated in 1890 by a Portuguese writer who said of it:
This instrument is well known in our province of Angola. They take a stick of a particular pliable wood and bend it into a bow, joining the ends with a thick string which is made beforehand from cotton fibre and stays very taut. On the lower part of the bow is fixed a small gourd with an opening of a size calculated to secure good vibrations. This opening is turned outwards [sic] and the string goes above it.
The bow is held between the body and the left arm, using the left hand to hold it at the right height. Touching the string at different heights with a stick held in the right hand produces good sounds which recall those of a violin and are altogether pleasant. The Loandas [i.e. Lunda] call it violâm [guitar]. They play it
when they walk around and also when they are lying in their huts. It is very handy and portable.39
According to José Redinha, the rucumbo musical bow is used not only by the Lunda but also by the Shinje and Mbangala of west central Angola.40
A similar bow, the ombumbumba of the Ovimbundu (Mbunda) of central Angola, was described and illustrated in 1934 by an American anthropologist who wrote of it: ‘The player holds in his right hand a reed which is tapped lightly on the bowstring, while the thumb and forefinger of the left hand are used occasionally in pressing the string to alter its vibrating length.’41Yet