The Roda Before the Roda: A Description from 1916

WHY THIS ARTICLE

One document, one story: the A Noite article of 9 January 1916 contains, under the pen of a mestre, the minute description of an African combat ring in Rio — rules, roles, hierarchy, the training of novices. It is an archive of the first importance for the genealogy of the roda and for the whole family of Black combat arts.

The scene

Let the document speak: “Among us, formerly, as soon as a religious or civil feast began, immediately the strong rings would form, in the hard or soft batuque, according to whether they were made up of valentes or carrapetas. It was in a corner of the church or the square; shoulder to shoulder circles formed, all firm and impatient […] they clapped their hands and intoned canticles, in chorus, in an onomatopoeia. The chief went to the middle of the circle and, after making a few turns, directed himself toward one of those in the ring, in an elegant and chivalrous gesture of challenge.”

The thesis’s finding falls: “The circle, associated with the chants and the clapping of hands, is similar to the current roda of capoeira; only the musical instruments are missing.” Everything is there — the closed circle shoulder to shoulder, the music of bodies, the leader at the centre, the ritualised challenge — half a century before the Bahian roda with the berimbau became the world image of the game. The structure precedes the orchestra.

The rules of the game

The rest of the document describes the mechanics of the duel: “The challenged one […] pressed his feet well together, then inclined the bust backward, raised the face a little, and in this attitude awaited in defence the blow which, with the violence of a lightning bolt, was applied to him, from the knees down. The ordeal borne, the hero substituted himself for the chief; and in his turn he went to apply the same blow to another. And thus they went on succeeding one another until there was a vanquished one.”

These lines record: an attack by turns, never simultaneous; a regulated target — from the knees down; an aim — imbalance; a rotation of roles — the victorious challenged one becomes the challenger; an outcome — until the vanquished. The strict alternation attacker/defender, the attack borne to the supports, victory by the fall: the structuring principles that run through the family of Black combat arts — down to the Guadeloupean mayolè and its combats of defiance — are recorded there, in a Rio newspaper, in 1916.

A school of capoeiras

The document has a sociological range Lothus himself makes explicit: valentes and carrapetas. The first term designated the grown men, outlaws, courageous and combative; the second, the apprentices, the young novices of the urban maltas. “So it is in the circle of the batuque that the new adepts of capoeiragem were formed. Attentive observation and immersion in the heart of the game’s complexity served as tools for transforming the young initiates.” The batuque was the school; the ring, the classroom; the chief’s challenge, the lesson.

A testimony submitted to critique

All the precautions of method impose themselves: Lothus describes “formerly” — a memory, perhaps embellished, of a man who pleads a cause. But three elements weigh in favour of the document: the author is a practitioner formed in the streets, not a folklorist; his description teems with technical and lexical details (valentes, carrapetas, hard/soft) that cross-check with independent sources; and he had no interest in inventing an African genealogy which, in 1916, rather harmed his cause before opinion.

The ring, chanted and hand-clapped, with its chief, its novices and its regulated duel, existed in Rio within living memory. When the roda with the berimbau arrives from Bahia in the 1950s, it will not create the form. It will re-furnish it.

SOURCES

Lothus, R., “O que é a capoeiragem. Rehabilite-se esse jogo nacional,” A Noite, Rio de Janeiro, 9 January 1916 (full quotations); Correio Mercantil, 11 January 1856 — National Library of Brazil (Rio de Janeiro). — Soares, C. E. L., “‘A negregada instituição’” (on valentes and carrapetas). — Malo, O., La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020, Part I, chap. C.4.

IN THE CORPUS

→ The Knight-Errant of Capoeiragem Was White

→ The Berimbau: An “Immemorial Tradition” More Recent Than We Think

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Roda Before the Roda: A Description from 1916. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 36. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-roda-before-the-roda-a-description-from-1916. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.