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The smell of sweat and rum: teacher authority in capoeira classes

2006; Routledge; Volume: 1; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17457820600715380

1745-7831

Sara Delamont,

Sports, Gender, and Society

Abstract The Brazilian martial art, capoeira, is popular in many countries outside Brazil, including the UK. Capoeira is generally taught by Brazilians whose livelihood depends on recruiting and retaining enough paying customers to keep their classes economically viable and socially pleasurable for the students. The teachers also have to establish and maintain authority over their students who are young adults with many other ways to spend their time and money. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in three British cities, the ways in which teacher authority is established, challenged and maintained are explored, including claims to authenticity, physical prowess, race, renaming the students, and skill on the dance floor. I have been privileged to watch Achilles teach more than 100 times, and to have seen Andromeda, Perseus, Patrokles, Cadmus, Orestes, Menelaos, Ajax, Xenophon, Perikles and Stratokles teach several times in the UK. These are all pseudonyms. In New Zealand in 2005 I was also able to watch Mestre Brabo and Mestre China teach: I thank them for their hospitality with their real names. I am grateful to the 100-plus students who have been in the classes. In particular, one dedicated and skilled capoeira student, Trovao, a social scientist, has helped me enormously and is a great co-author. Rodrigo Ribeiro both reads my papers and cartwheels into the roda to experience capoeira in the UK. John Evans expressed enthusiasm for the project. I am also grateful to Lunghri and Jagai for being interviewed, and to Gary Alan Fine, Andre L. T. Reis, Jonathan Skinner, Susie Scott and J. Lowell Lewis for advice and academic enthusiasm. Paul Atkinson read several drafts of the paper with his usual mix of criticism and support. Rosemary Bartle Jones word-processed the paper. Notes 1. Today capoeira is taught all over the world by many masters (mestres) (Assuncao, Citation2005). Mestre Bimba took capoeira to Rio, and developed the Regional style. Mestre Pastinha, also revered as a founding father, is credited with the canonisation of Capoeira Angola, held by its devotees to be more authentically black, more purely 'Brazilian' and more sinuous. There are various groups, or 'schools', in contemporary capoeira, such as Senzala, Paname, Unaio and Beribazu, to which learners are loyal. 2. Assuncao (Citation2005) chronicles the diaspora of capoeira. Readers ignorant of capoeira could usefully go to www.cordaodeouro.co.uk, the website of one London-based 'academy', or www.gracemillennium.com/spring00/capoeira.htm for interviews with American women enthusiasts. 3. I have watched capoeira classes in three British cities: Cloisterham, Longhampston and Tolnbridge (all pseudonyms), in New Zealand and in the Netherlands. The male students have pseudonymous capoeira nicknames from Kipling's The Jungle Book, the females names of flowers. This reflects the spirit of nicknaming practices, but no class I have seen actually used these two sources, so individuals are protected. 4. Achilles is the capoeira teacher who works in Cloisterham and Tolnbridge. I have used 'teacher' to include anyone qualified to teach capoeira, including those at grades below mestre, to protect the confidentiality of teachers, who may or may not be mestres. All the teachers are 'he' because I have only seen one woman teach regularly, although there are women mestras in the UK. The term 'student' here means student of capoeira. 5. An ideal researcher would be young, fit and supple, able to sing in tune, play a drum, and to do Laban notation of the moves. Lewis (Citation1992) and Downey (Citation2005) had all these skills. I do not (see Delamont, Citation2005). 6. Drums (atabaques), tambourines (pandeiros) iron bells (agogos), and the reco-reco, which is a friction percussion instrument, are all played, but the king of the instruments is the berimbau. This is a wooden bow, as tall as the player, tightly strung with wire from a car tyre. The noise comes from a gourd, cabasa, which resonates. The instrument is played with a bamboo stick. The player alters the notes by moving a polished stone, and also shakes a small wicker rattle (caxixi). The songs are belted out by the person on the central berimbau, who sings verses, while the audience, and all the participants sing the chorus. The most famous chorus is 'zum, zum, zum; capoeira mata um': (capoeira kills me).