SOUTH AMERICA · WORLDWIDE · UNESCO 2014

ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS

Born in Brazil, in Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Recife alike, among the deported African populations and their descendants, capoeira grew inside the world of slavery and its aftermath. A game of skill and agility practised, transformed and codified in the urban milieu, it was recognised as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity (UNESCO, 2014). More than a game, it was and remains a means of emancipation for the Black population within colonial and post-colonial society, in particular from the late 1970s onward, a form of resilience and cultural resistance, and of reexistence too. A site of memory of the transatlantic trade and of slavery, it was and remains likewise an instrument of racial equality and of the recognition of Black people in the building and the power of Brazil.

THE GAME

Played in the roda to the berimbaus, which command the tempo and the register of the exchange: evasion rather than the block, unbalancing, feigned blows, circular and inverted kicks. There is no formal scoring, mastery of the game itself establishes rank, and the circle, singing and clapping, is both audience and judge.

PLACE IN THE FAMILY

Capoeira is the family's most complete kaleidoscopic game: it holds together the horizontal pole (the touch and the near-touch) and the vertical pole (negative unbalancing, the provoked fall, and positive unbalancing, the fall deliberately taken), inside one rhythmic frame. All the paradoxical principles converge in it: co-opposition, the alternation of roles, the invitation to rupture, the continuous flow imposed by the music. It is the field's yardstick, the game against which the internal logic of every other practice is compared.

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.

Olivier Malo, La technique corporelle au service de l’identité nationale : les élites et la capoeira du Brésil, de 1928 à nos jours [Body technique in the service of national identity: the elites and capoeira in Brazil, 1928 to the present], Master’s dissertation (STAPS), Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, 2008.

Matthias Röhrig Assunção, Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art, London, Routledge, 2005.

Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares, A capoeira escrava e outras tradições rebeldes no Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850, Campinas, Editora da Unicamp, 2001.

HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY

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

RELATED PRACTICES

→ Engolo, Inverted kicks, hands as support

→ Batuque, Afro-Brazilian roots

→ Manì, Circle, drums, evasion, continuous flow

→ Mandinga, The art of the trap