SOUTH AMERICA · EXTINCT

ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS

Played formerly in the Bahian Recôncavo, the sugar hinterland of Salvador, by the Afro-Brazilian communities whose festive circles also carried the samba and the capoeira, the batuque belonged to the male economy of prestige of the engenho world. It died out in the twentieth century, surviving as the ancestor capoeira masters cite: Mestre Bimba, son of a batuque champion, drew on it for the regional he founded.

THE GAME

A game of the Bahian Recôncavo, played in a rhythmic circle: one player stands planted on his stances while the other delivers the assault with leg strikes and hip blows, baú, encruzilhada, rabo-de-arraia, the roles then alternating. The winner is the one left standing; a fall means defeat.

PLACE IN THE FAMILY

The dissociation of roles and the unequal start. The thesis analyses the batuque as a textbook case: the wrestlers do not hold the same status, one attacks, the other defends, and the balance of force is dissymmetrical, the defender set in a disadvantageous position from which it is hard to resist for long. Like the back-turned chamade of capoeira, one player is placed in vulnerability, at odds with the necessity of staying upright. As the thesis writes, “the interest of the game lies in this paradox.”

The thesis places the batuque, with the bènaden and the Malagasy tolona, among the games of a single dimension, distinct from capoeira, maní, danmyé and moring, which unite horizontality and verticality. It belongs to the Carioca and Bahian leg-game complex, beside pernada, cateretê and mandinga.

SOURCES

Olivier Malo, La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles, 1905–1984 [Capoeira and the Black combat arts: erased history, invisible techniques (1905–1984)], doctoral thesis in History, Université des Antilles, 2020.

HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY

MALO, Olivier. Batuque. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/batuque [accessed date].

RELATED PRACTICES

→ Pernada, Carioca leg-game complex

→ Cateretê, Sweeps in rhythm, a fall eliminates

→ Capoeira, Same Afro-Brazilian matrix

→ Manì, Asymmetrical game, alternating roles