Capoeira on the Cover of Black Belt

WHY THIS ARTICLE

Capoeira's global rise is treated as recent. The thesis documents its 1960s internationalisation through martial-arts media and folklore festivals — a staged export, not an organic spread.

On the cover, on the stage

Group members made the cover of the martial-arts magazine Black Belt; the article about them, accompanied by many photographs, retraced their trajectory and presented their vision of capoeira. In 1968, Olodum represented Brazil at the Third Latin American Folklore Festival in Argentina, taking second place after winning three medals; in 1969, at a festival in Peru, its members performed to the sound of the berimbaus and the atabaques.

A staged internationalisation

The chapter devoted to the folkloric capoeira groups of the 1960s shows an art carried abroad through media and festivals — a deliberate, staged export of a Bahian folklore, not a spontaneous diffusion.

Why it matters

Capoeira's globalisation was produced, through magazines and folklore stages, in the 1960s. The worldwide art was launched, not merely grown.

SOURCES

La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (Part III: the folkloric groups of the 1960s; Black Belt; Olodum at Latin American festivals)

IN THE CORPUS

→ The Famous Senzala Group Was Built on Bimba's Regional Capoeira

→ The Only 'Real' Capoeira Was Invented in the 1930s

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. Capoeira on the Cover of Black Belt. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 114. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/capoeira-on-the-cover-of-black-belt. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.