The 'Traditional' Capoeira Was Invented by the 'Modern' One

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The 'traditional' capoeira is assumed to precede the modern sport. The thesis reverses the order: it was the sporting rupture that produced, by contrast, the very category of the 'traditional'.

A category born of its opposite

In Rio, the sportivisation of capoeiragem gave rise to a distinction between 'moderns' and 'ancients'. The birth of a 'traditional' capoeira followed the schism: it was the irruption of the sporting form, thought from the carioca model, that made a 'traditional' capoeira nameable as such — a category produced by contrast with the modern rupture.

A schism still visible

The scission between moderns and ancients had consequences visible to this day. What is now revered as the older, purer form owes its identity to the very modernisation it defines itself against — the tradition and its rupture born in the same movement.

Why it matters

The 'traditional' is not always the ancestor of the 'modern'. Here the sporting rupture came first and, by reaction, invented the tradition it claimed to have descended from.

SOURCES

La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (Part II, C.2: the schism between 'moderns' and 'ancients' and the birth of 'traditional' capoeira).

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HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The 'Traditional' Capoeira Was Invented by the 'Modern' One. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 86. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-traditional-capoeira-was-invented-by-the-modern-one. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.