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: criminalised by the Penal Code of 1890, prosecuted, then progressively converted into sport, national symbol and world heritage (UNESCO, 2014). Its social functions have shifted with each era, weapon of the street corners, marker of male prestige, art of the academies, banner of Black identity, without the game ever ceasing to order its own hierarchy of masters and players.

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, continuous flow. 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, doctoral thesis in History, Université des Antilles, 2020.

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