Today we play capoeira in training halls, in the roda, with music. In 19th-century Rio de Janeiro, however, capoeira was associated with groups organised on the street. These groups were called maltas, and they divided the city’s neighbourhoods between them. In the last years of the Empire these maltas came together under two large alliances:...

Today the berimbau is the symbol of capoeira. It starts the roda and sets the pace of the game. But this single-string bow wasn’t always associated with capoeira. In the drawings and notes of Europeans who travelled through Brazil in the 19th century, the berimbau usually appears in the hands of a musician playing alone...

One of the names that appears most often in capoeira songs is Besouro Mangangá. In the songs he is remembered as a hero whom bullets could not harm, who always escaped the police and who was finally killed with a knife made from tucum wood. Besouro was a real person: his real name was Manoel...

One of the dates that comes up often in capoeira songs is 13 May, the day slavery was abolished in Brazil. But the songs don’t always tell of this day as a celebration; some celebrate it, others question it. In this article we explain what the Lei Áurea, the Golden Law, was, what happened after...

Everyone who starts capoeira soon learns a new word: abadá. In capoeira, abadá is the name for the trousers we wear in class, with an elastic waist, loose around the knees and usually white. Groups generally print their logo on the left leg. The word is much older than capoeira and originally referred not to...

When capoeira history is told, the first names that come to mind are men: Besouro, Bimba, Pastinha, Waldemar. One reason is that most of the old records are police and court documents, and how those documents recorded people. Another is that capoeira was long seen as a male domain. Even so, women were always part...

Many capoeira events end the same way: at the close of the roda the berimbaus are put down, the pandeiro and clapping carry on, and people take turns stepping into the middle to dance with small steps. This is samba de roda. Samba de roda is a tradition that developed in the same region and...

Today we know the early history of capoeira largely from records kept by those who tried to ban it. In the first half of the 19th century the Rio de Janeiro police wrote down, one by one, the people they arrested for playing capoeira: their name, their master, their homeland in Africa, what was found...

Capoeira, which is taught in schools today and is on the UNESCO list, was banned by law in Brazil for about fifty years. The basis of the ban was the Penal Code issued by Decree no. 847 of 11 October 1890. Article 402 of the code named capoeira explicitly and prescribed prison sentences. In this...

The most distinctive sound of a capoeira roda is the berimbau. The berimbau starts the roda, sets the pace of the game, and the game ends at its signal. Yet the origin of an instrument so closely identified with capoeira today is much older than capoeira itself. In this article we look at the berimbau’s...