Bahia’s capoeira mestres, heirs of the legendary Bimba and Pastinha, circulate among more than 150 countries teaching the game-art. With the participation of Mestres Joao Pequeno, Joao Grande, Acordeon, Itapua, Camisa, Nenel, Curio, Boca Rica, Moraes, Janja, and Sabia.

By Tatiana Mendonça
Published May 10, 2009 in Revista Muito
Translated into English by Shayna McHugh

The two Joãos play capoeira as though they were dancing in slow motion. They’ve done this in many rodas, and occasionally someone would film them. Watch the 1986 film Capoeira Angola do Mundo, which contains this scene. At the time, they were already great mestres, and today they are legends in the art that spreads from Bahia to the whole world. One is João Pequeno; the other is João Grande. One lives in the neighborhood of Fazenda Coutos in Salvador; the other lives in New York.

In his house on the periphery of Salvador, João Pequeno searches his memory to remember how old he is: “78,” he says firmly. “What 78? You’re 91, Mr. João,” his granddaughter quickly corrects. “No, I’m not that old,” he retorts, laughing.

The problem, according to him, is that his mind is divided in two parts. “There’s the part I remember and the part I don’t remember. But I remember capoeira.” I ask if he still plays, and in response he gets up to ginga. “I’ve been a stonemason and a painter, but it was capoeira that gave me the title of doctor,” he says, referring to the three titles he received – in 2003, he became doctor honoris causa by the Federal University of Uberlandia, the same title he received last year from the Federal University of Bahia.

It’s Saturday morning and 32 children (or a few less, depending on if some of them slept too late) go to his house to participate in the project Pequenos do João (John’s Little Ones), which is maintained voluntarily by those who live there. The kids go to Mestre João to receive a blessing. Christiane Santos Miranda, João’s 26-year-old granddaughter, teaches the class. But João, sitting on a bench and taking photos (he loves the camera!) doesn’t hesitate to contribute: “He’s not watching the others, that’s why he’s doing it wrong.” “The rabo-de-arraia goes from here to there.” “Straighten your leg.” “Look at the other player under your arm.” “Change feet.” “Come on, come on.” And, a bit irritated, “If you don’t know, then leave.” His granddaughter, who is known as Nani, tells the children (who range from 3-13 years old) to listen to Mestre João, while simultaneously telling her grandfather to be patient with the kids, as they are young.

Mestre João’s body may not be able to do many movements, but his head still retains all the technique. Because of the lack of a car to take him to the Capoeira Fort in Santo Antonio, he rarely goes to the academy anymore. Because of his advanced age, he no longer travels to give capoeira workshops outside of Brazil. “He used to go frequently to Europe, as well as the United States, with Mestre João Grande,” says Nani.

It was from there – more specifically, New York – that Mestre João Grande, 75, spoke with us for this article. “It was God who brought me here,” he says. The first time he traveled was to Senegal in 1966, with Mestre Pastinha. Later, he went to Europe with the folkloric performance group Viva Bahia. In 1989, he made his first visit to the U.S., and one year later he went there to stay, opening up the Capoeira Angola Center of Mestre João Grande. “I’ve done well here. I visit Bahia on vacation, and I spend a month. I’m adventurous, I like to travel the world.”

In June, he goes to teach in Belo Horizonte, and then to Europe. João Grande agilely evades the question of whether he makes a lot of money or became rich. He emphasizes that in New York, everything is very expensive. “My life is in order here. I can’t say how much I make because the number of students varies a lot. Yesterday there were 21 students, today 15 came, tomorrow perhaps 10.” But the mestres of Bahia state that João Grande is like the Ronaldinho of capoeira (proportionally, of course). There’s a reason behind the saying, “It was God who sent João Grande to play capoeira.”

João Grande speaks openly about what capoeira has given him: “Everything, everything. My friends and everything else.” His only complaint is that he thinks capoeira has changed, and he feels nostalgic for the old says when it was played freely in the street festivals. “They no longer have those beautiful parties. And many people don’t take learning capoeira as seriously as they should.”

Mestre Acordeon Day

The opposite American coast is where Mestre Acordeon, 65 years old, has made his home for the past 30 years. To celebrate the date, the government of Berkley, California, where he has his academy, created “Mestre Acordeon Day” last year, celebrated on October 18. Mestre Itapuã, who was in the U.S. for the big event, remembers: “He asked me if it seemed like a bunch of crap, and I said no – it was a form of recognition. After all, who has something similar in Brazil? Nobody.” Acordeon and Itapuã were students of Mestre Bimba, who created capoeira regional.

But Itapuã, 61, didn’t miss the opportunity to poke fun. “When he got up on stage to receive the award, I yelled ‘What crap!’” – And Acordeon retorted with words perhaps older than the sons of the world’s oldest profession.

Itapuã also had the opportunity to live outside Brazil and make his living from capoeira, but he preferred to stay here. In 1970, Mestre Camisa Roxa, another one who emigrated, invited him to live in Germany. “But I chose to stay here and study,” he explains. Itapuã ended up becoming a dentist, a profession that, as he says, he performs “when capoeira allows me.”

He is a retired professor from the Federal University of Bahia, but he continues his activity as mestre. He is part of the oldest capoeira group in activity in Bahia, the Ginga Association of Capoeira, created on November 13, 1972 – Itapuã has an impressive memory, as he describes everything with the exact date and time. It was on September 22, 1964, at 2 PM that he signed up at Mestre Bimba’s academy. “If he was still alive, I would still be his student. I only began to teach because I had no one else to train with.”

In July, he will travel to Holland and then Switzerland and France. His payment is on average 3,000 dollars (or Euros) – there are some who earn up to 5,000 Euros for a weekend of workshops in Europe. But Itapuã emphasizes that these are only a handful, comparing it to soccer: “You can count on your fingers the superstars who earn well.”

Itapuã, like João Grande, is annoyed with the paths that capoeira has taken in the world. “Capoeira arrived outside Brazil very disorganized. Unqualified people began teaching classes. There is a group in France that no longer receives Brazilians – they say that they’ve already learned everything. And it’s an extremely weak group! Teaching capoeira in itself is not very difficult. The hard part is being more than a parrot, with the processor demonstrating and the students repeating the movements without understanding their meaning.”

No Vale-Tudo

But the worst thing, says Itapuã, is when people want to make capoeira into a violent martial art. “I don’t like it when they take capoeira to vale-tudo [anything-goes] fights. One thing has nothing to do with another. Our history was always one of the capoeirista beating up the clueless guy, not beating up another capoeirista.”

Outside of Brazil, the Ginga Association has groups in New York and Portugal. One group with more schools is Abada Capoeira of Mestres Camisa Roxa and Camisa, 54, who has lived in Rio for the past 17 years. As far as he knows, there are “fifty-something” Abada affiliates. “It’s because a lot of students travel and begin to give classes in other countries, and we only find out later,” he says.

Want to know his schedule for the next months? He goes to the U.S., Austria, Portugal, and he is thinking about Mexico, but is unsure because of the threat of swine flu. “In the rich countries, you can earn more than in Brazil. It’s actually possible to live with dignity.”

Camisa began to study with Bimba when he was 12 years old, in an era when few children learned capoeira. For him, Bimba, in addition to a capoeira teacher, was a father. “I lost my father very early, so he filled that role in my life.” Itapuã, who also lost his biological father, feels the same way. There are also Bimba’s biological children (no offense to the ‘adopted’ ones) like Mestre Nenel, 48.

Nenel says that he learned from his father how to have dignity and balance, and that a good mestre cannot lack these qualities. “Today, the title of mestre is common – any guy can get a certificate and become a mestre. In the old days, a mestre was consecrated by the community, because of his character as an educator and advisor.”

Nenel also is not a fan of the use of cords to mark the levels of the students, like belts in judo. “I tried to use them at one point, but it ended up going against the principles that I had in capoeira, of the more experienced players helping the less experienced ones. Many felt superior because of the color of their cords.”

Nenel studied until the 8th grade, and has been making a living from capoeira for the past 25 years. When he was 30, he traveled to teach in London, and has been racking up the frequent flyer miles ever since. Sao Paulo, Canada, Germany, Italy, Colombia, and Belgium are the trips he has planned for this year.

In command of the roda in the Mestre Bimba Foundation, located in the Pelourinho, he changed a Japanese student’s nickname from Coco to Licuri, wished a good return voyage to a German student, and encouraged a student who was going to give classes in Lebanon (“Go do your work, but you have family here, don’t ever be afraid to return”). To finish, he complained about the “basement” in which the Foundation operates (it’s one of the four spaces in the historical center designated by IPAC for academies): “This isn’t the type of place we deserve. Capoeira has become a historical patrimony, but we don’t see any benefits from it.”

Frederico Mendonça, director of IPAC (Institute of Cultural and Artistic Patrimony), replies: “The groups are badly-adjusted with a paternalistic position of the State. The associations need to be better organized and build their projects.”

Mestre TAM and Mestre Varig

Nearby, in Santo Antonio, is Mestre Curió’s Escola de Capoeira Angola Irmăos Gemeos. Don’t you dare call it an academy, he warns: “That’s a thing of the barons, of the capitalists. The system only uses me.” Curió, who inherited his nickname from his grandfather, was born in a capoeira roda, as he likes to say. He began to train with Mestre Pastinha as a young boy and only stopped when Pastinha passed away. “But, for me, he didn’t die.”

Curió has had a number of professions – driver, transportation worker, cook – but today he makes his living from capoeira. He is 72 years old, and has been in capoeira for 65. He also has had a school in Mexico, for the past 13 years (“I speak a bit of Spanish”). There are others in Martinique, France, Israel, Belgium, and Ecuador. He has even been to the United Nations to give a lecture, which he brags about casually. “Outside of Brazil, it’s possible to earn a decent salary. Here, we do social work, but nobody values it.”

He makes it very clear that he has no intention to create a factory of knowledge. “Today, if you put 100 mestres in the blender, you barely fill one cup. One must truly know what it is to teach capoeira.” Curió is as elegant as he is distrustful, as he plays with the interviewer. “In all these years of capoeira, guess how many mestres I’ve graduated?” he asks. I guess – absurdly, I assume – thirty (it’s impossible to think straight with the way he looks at you). “No, only three. Today there are a ton of TAM and Varig [Brazilian airlines] mestres. It’s the airplane ride that makes them become mestres.”

The historian Carlos Eugenio Libano, professor at the Federal University of Bahia, tells us that capoeira began to spread from Bahia in the 60s, through folkloric shows. “But it was in the 80s that there was an explosion of capoeiristas going to other countries.”

Curió lives in the neighborhood of Castelo Branco, and plans to go to Paris in September. “All odds pointed to me becoming a criminal. I ate bread from dumpsters and everything. It was capoeira that gave me everything, that made me the man I am today.”

It was also capoeira that gave Mestre Boca Rica, 73, another student of Pastinha, his golden teeth (although he has since replaced the gold, since he couldn’t stand the constant jokes). With little formal education (“didn’t even reach the 4th grade”), he was a stonemason and salesman before becoming a mestre. But let’s allow him to tell about it: I’ve traveled all of Brazil / I’ve appeared on TV / Today I am a great mestre / A great citizen – this song is on one of the four CDs he has published.

But he hasn’t just traveled in Brazil. He has counted how many countries he’s visited to teach, give workshops, and lecture. “ I’ve been to 26 first-world countries. Since 1986 I haven’t traveled by bus; only by plane. I don’t speak English, though I know a few words in Japanese… but I never wanted to live outside Brazil. It’s very cold.”

Students of Students

After Bimba and Pastinha passed away, their students remained, many of whom became mestres. Then came the students of these students, who also began to give classes – for example, Mestre Moraes, 59, of Grupo de Capoeira Angola Pelourinho. He learned with “the great João Grande.” When he had to go to Rio for military service, he didn’t find any capoeira angola there, so he began to teach. “I became a mestre, and I took on this role in a passionate way.”

Today, in addition to teaching capoeira, he is an English professor in public schools. He also published four CDs with original compositions – one of them, the 2004 release Brincando na Roda, was nominated for a Grammy.

In addition to being a capoeira mestre, he got his Master’s Degree from the Federal University of Bahia in 2007, with the dissertation The Angola Nation in Bahia 1811-1850. He can speak the academic language, but without losing the common metaphors. “Today, mestres are like beautiful women. When they stop being popular, they get left aside. I will go through this as well… Today, people want ‘capoeira atheletes.’ The true philosophy is no longer considered interesting.”

For him, capoeira is experiencing “its worst moment in Bahia” (he repeats this for emphasis). “The mestres who question it are still ostracized.” Moraes says that the Capoeira Fort, a space that he fought to be revitalized and where his academy functions (along with those of João Pequeno, Curió, and Boca Rica) is “stopped.” “There’s no schedule, there are no visitors. And if a light bulb burns out here in the academy, I’m the one who has to change it,” he complains.

Frederico Mendonça of IPAC says that the maintenance of the academies is the state government’s responsibility and that there is still a “big challenge to find a way to administrate the fort,” which was re-activated in 2006. The secretary Marcio Meirelles has committed to establishing a shared leadership, like the one that exists for the Sao Joaquim Market.” The lack of tourists, he says, is because of the lack of normal transportation to the fort. “This is one of the reasons the fort can’t reach its full potential. We’re talking with the government to try to resolve this.”

Let’s return to the subject at hand. Nowadays, we also see women becoming capoeira mestras – like Janja, 49, a student of Mestre Moraes. She began studying physics, then changed to history, and then resolved to complete her Master’s and Doctoral Degrees in education. Her academic career brought her to Sao Paulo, and because she had no one to train with there (yet again!), she began to give classes. She founded the Nzinga Institute of Capoeira Angola, which also has a line of research and study. “I never officially received the title of capoeira mestre, and I even resisted it. But I am proud of being recognized as such by the capoeira community, mainly by my students.”

The students suffer a little with Janja’s rigor, but there is no lack of joy in her roda. “You have to have both.” Thanks to capoeira, which she says is the foundation of her every thought, she is proud of having achieved the body she has. “Today, I can say: This body belongs to me!”

In 2006, she returned to Salvador and today she gives classes in the Education Department of the Federal University of Bahia. In May, Janja goes to Bolivia; in June, to the U.S.; in November, to Australia. “There, it’s full-time capoeira, from 8 AM to 11 PM.” What she earns is “on a per-project basis.” Her group has schools in Mexico, Spain, Germany, Mozambique, and England, with women “in leadership positions.”

The researcher, educator (and also capoeirista) Pedro Abib says that this women’s movement in capoeira is recent, within the last few decades. “The women bring more balance and tolerance to capoeira rodas. And they have become more and more organized, conquering new areas and putting an end to prejudices, which are still common in this world.”

Finally, we have Mestre Sabiá, 37, graduated by Mestre Camisa. Sabiá is a legitimate representative of those who make capoeira their profession. Since he was so restless in school, his mother put him in martial arts classes. He jumped into capoeira, which he continues to this day. At age 18, he went to Germany and taught capoeira for two years.

Upon returning to Brazil, his mother (a lawyer) wanted him to study properly. But Sabiá continues teaching in academies and private schools. He wanted to teach poor children, but since the club where he gave classes didn’t allow these children to enter, 10 years ago he founded Project Mandinga, where today he teaches 100 children and teenagers (at times there have been up to 300, but now resources are more limited). The children also have workshops to learn how to make the musical instruments as well as English classes. “We have 11 affiliates in other countries, and we’re preparing the kids to teach outside of Brazil. The majority want to go to other countries.”

Sabiá continues traveling, making “about ten trips” per year outside of Brazil. Already this year, he has been to four other countries. His price is 1,500 Euros. What irony, that it was with the money he earned playing capoeira that his mother was able to travel as well. “Today I earn more than my brothers,” he laughs.

Mestre Sabiá plays what he calls contemporary capoeira. “I believe in tradition, but I don’t worry about rigidly following capoeira angola or regional. I want these styles to survive. But I play without fear of messing up.” Indeed, capoeira re-invents itself. But one must always ask the mestres’ blessing.

Ostracism at the end of life

Bimba (1899-1974) and Pastinha (1889-1981) went beyond the category of mestres and became myths in the capoeira world. They gave new life and methodology to the game, transforming it from “crime to culture” in the words of historian Carlos Eugenio Libano. Pastinha revitalized capoeira angola, and Bimba created capoeira regional in the 1930s, incorporating elements of other martial arts. Capoeira gradually left the streets to be practiced in academies, attracting the young middle class. Bimba opened his academy in 1932, and Pastinha in 1941.

Despite their legendary status, Pastinha and Bimba died impoverished. “Pastinha lived in the D. Pedro II Shelter. One day, I received a phone call saying that he had passed away and would be buried as a poor person. I went to take care of the arrangements, and none of his students were there. To this day, I don’t know where his mortal remains rest,” relates Mestre Itapuã. Bimba was disappointed with the lack of recognition and support in Bahia and moved to Goias, with an invitation to work at a university. But the promise was not fulfilled, and Bimba died a year later.

Nani, granddaughter of Mestre João Pequeno, complains about the lack of a retirement fund for her grandfather: “What’s the point of having so many honorary titles if he can’t have decent living conditions?”

Last year, capoeira was recognized as a Brazilian cultural patrimony. According to Carlos Amorim, superintendent of the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Patrimony in Bahia, a special retirement plan should be created for mestres. “I think this project should be finished by the end of the year.”