Black Combat Arts Institute.
HISTORY · BRAZIL
The 'Traditional' Capoeira Angola Was Born Modern
6 MIN READ
Far from the image of purity and African authenticity, capoeira angola was itself an invented tradition of the 1930s, of its own time and sporting current.
WHY THIS ARTICLE
Capoeira angola is universally presented as the pure, ancestral, authentically African form. Following Vassallo and Pires, the thesis shows it was constructed in the twentieth century — a modernity in search of an appropriated past.
Purity as a recent construction
Simone Pondé Vassallo, in her EHESS thesis of 2001, showed that capoeira angola — far from the image of purity and authenticity attached to it — was a tradition invented in the 1930s, inscribed in modernity and the sporting current. The collective imagining of an immutable, authentically African capoeira was the fruit of a collaboration: its figurehead Mestre Pastinha, intellectuals close to him such as Edison Carneiro, Carybé and Jorge Amado, the Salvador Tourism Office and certain politicians.
An echo of Pires
Vassallo's work echoed that of Pires, who explained that capoeira angola was elaborated over the twentieth century, contrary to popular belief, and that the claim of an ancestral continuity with the African motherland was a myth. Until the 1950s, Bahian capoeira had almost no visibility in Brazilian society beyond the popular quarters of Salvador and a narrow circle of intellectuals.
Why it matters
The most 'traditional' capoeira is not a survival of Africa but a recomposition of the present — modernity searching for a past held to be more authentic, and finding it by building it.
SOURCES
La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (Part III, following S. P. Vassallo, EHESS, 2001, and Pires on the invention of capoeira angola).
IN THE CORPUS
→ The Only 'Real' Capoeira Was Invented in the 1930s
→ How Bahia and Capoeira Became the Same Word
→ The Anthropologist Who Predicted Capoeira's Death in 1937
→ The Kick That Wasn't in Capoeira Angola in 1964
HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE
MALO, Olivier. The 'Traditional' Capoeira Angola Was Born Modern. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 52. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-traditional-capoeira-angola-was-born-modern. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.