How Bahia and Capoeira Became the Same Word

WHY THIS ARTICLE

That 'capoeira' evokes 'Bahia' by reflex seems natural. The thesis dates this reflex precisely: it settled in the 1950s, in a media vacuum, not in the depths of history.

A vacant stage

Following the development policies for the game in Salvador and the relative disappearance of Rio's capoeira from the media scene for nearly ten years (1940–1949), the 'invention of the tradition of Bahian capoeira' fixed itself in the collective imagination in the 1950s — in an almost virgin space.

A near-pleonasm

So complete was the occupation that the two terms, Bahia and capoeira, came to merge, becoming almost pleonastic — even on carioca soil. The atypia of the Bahian form in the Sudeste, its very difference, was the origin of its success.

Why it matters

The equation Bahia = capoeira is not a fact of origin but the trace of a decade of silence in Rio and of a deliberate promotion in Salvador. Geography here is the residue of a media history.

SOURCES

La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (Part III, on the fixing of the Bahian tradition in the 1950s and the Rio media eclipse of 1940–1949).

IN THE CORPUS

→ The 'Traditional' Capoeira Angola Was Born Modern

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

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. How Bahia and Capoeira Became the Same Word. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 53. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/how-bahia-and-capoeira-became-the-same-word. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.