Those who practice capoeira call it The Game - Jogo de Capoeira, the capoeira game.

But it is not a game in the sense of being a sport because there is no "winner" and "loser", there are no referees, no predetermined time for duration of the game, and not even rigid rules notwithstanding that tradition gives some flexible lines of action for its dynamics.


We might say capoeira is a dance-fight-game, because the game is done to the sound of specific musical instruments and songs and encompasses elements of dance.  It also has elements of martial arts, self-defense and fighting technique, although its goal is not to "defeat the enemy".  Acrobatic movements are also part of the capoeira "body dialogue" vocabulary, as well as a certain "ritualistic" approaches, notwithstanding, it has nothing to do with religion and is not performed in a "serious" or "mystical" context.

The capoeira players form a circle - the Roda -; some half a dozen are playing the musical percussion instruments, the main one being a long-bow with a gourd attached to one of its ends.  The rest of the players are singing and clapping hands.  Two men step inside the circle... and the game begins.

We have talked about these subjects, as well the ritual, the music, the lives of the main capoeira mestres (teachers) of the past, capoeira teaching and learning (which included carefully detailed exercises, illustrated by series of drawings, for players of different level and experience) in the Nestor Capoeira Trilogy:

•	The little capoeira book.  Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1995.
•	Capoeira, roots of the dance-fight-game. Berkeley: NAB, 2001.
•	A streetsmart song, capoeira philosophy and inner life. Berkeley: Blue Snake (NAB), 2006.

These books were originally published in Brazil and then translated and published in the US as well as in France, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Finland and Poland. They can be bought at www.amazon.com or www.northatlanticbooks.com

Below we quote some parts of these books in order to give a summarized, simplistic and stereotyped version (due to the lack of space) of capoeira's philosophy and history


Dancing the dark night away,
playing the Game by the moonlight
under the sharp
crystal light
of the stars.
Through a looking glass
lightly.
A tale told by a fool.
A tool,
a stool in the School
that differs not right from wrong.
The streetsmart's song
when the day is dawn.

"Malícia, considered the essence of the game and the main capoeira fundamento (foundation), is broadly defined as the specific way the experienced player "sees" and interacts with life, the world, and especially human beings.

In The Little Capoeira Book I explained that, in a stricter sense, malícia is the thing that makes one player predict what the other will do and, at the same time, fool his partner by faking one move while planning another.

In A Streetsmart song, capoeira philosophy and inner life, we said that humans are mediocre, mean, limited, false, full of prejudice, and full of shit - at least as Capoeira sees them.

The society we live in isn't much better: badly distributed and poorly utilized resources, social injustice, misery, war, violence, mass marketing and consumerism, false and stereotyped values.

Capoeira's malícia is the knowledge of all these things - "knowledge of the human's true nature" -, the knowledge of this panoramic and global picture, seasoned with a strong dose of "good humor" (for lack of a better word) and "dressed" with the colors of Brazilian Afro and underground culture.

This knowledge of the "human's true nature", including one's own, comes in greater or lesser degree to all players without exception; it is a consequence of playing the game with different people in different places. It is not a rational knowledge, and reading or speaking about it will not enable you to incarnate it, make it part of yourself.  It is a sort of "body knowledge" that you acquire by playing the game and, with time, .slowly changes the way the player relates to life and to people.

In this way, it is basically different from the "good humor" that has to be fed, nourished, and developed.

The "good humor" we are referring to is not the humor of TV shows, and is not the "don't worry, be happy".  It is more like the joy and lust of living life that we see when, for example, we watch very young kids playing by the seaside: they jump, yell, run after the receding waves and then run from the coming waves -they're having a very good time, they are really into it.

The "knowledge" without the support of the "good humor" can become very heavy. It might transform the player into someone. Incapable of having fun, and who is only fascinated by power and its ploys. This takes him away from the essence of the game and prevents him from being someone who grooves on life, has fun, and enjoys living.

Now maybe you will better understand the verses that introduced the book “A Streetsmart Song, capoeira philosophy and inner life”, the third and last book of the Nestor Capoeira Trilogy:

Meu camarada,
My comrade,
o capoeira é muito mais
the capoeira player is much more
que um lutador que da pernada.
than a fighter who delivers kicks.

Ele é um artista,
He is an artist,
sua força é a alegria de viver.
his strength is the joy of living.
Ele conhece a palavra-chave "Amor"
He knows the key word "Love",
e no entanto o capoeirista sabe:
nonetheless the player knows:
a maldade existe.
evil exists.

Será que tu ainda nao ouviu
Is it possible you haven't heard
o que se anda cantando nas rodas por aí:
what is being sung in the circles here and there:

Galo já cantou,
The cock has already sung,
já raiou o dia.
the day has already dawned.


In Capoeira, roots of the dance-fight-game, we explained that there are many theories about capoeira's origins notwithstanding all agree it is a creation of the African man: or (as others say)

•	It was created in Africa and brought to Brazil by the African slaves; it was created in Brazil by the African slaves. or (as others say)
•	It was developed in the big plantation farms; it developed in the quilombos (runaway slave communities in the middle of the forest); or (as others say) it was developed by the slaves in, at those times, Brazil's three main cities (Rio de Janeiro, Recife and Salvador).
•	What is known for sure comes after 1800.

In 1806, Don João, the Sixt, king of Portugal, and all his court fled from Napoleon Bonaparte who had invaded his country.  They came to Brazil, one of Portugal's bigger colonies  at that time.

An unprecedented level of police persecution under Don João in the early 1800s elicited a new response from the black slave community and a very specific one by the black slaves' capoeira groups in Rio de Janeiro (the capital of Brazil at that time). Little by little the capoeiristas started to organize themselves in maltas (groups, gangs). Initially the groups were composed only of black slaves but later on, circa 1850, free blacks and mulattos were participating. And very soon these maltas had absorbed not only poor whites and the scum of the streets, but also soldiers and all ranks of the military, police officers, politicians, and some of the richer and wilder playboys"  of the 1870s.

The maltas terrorized the city, confronting police and intimidating "honest" citizens. Each malta controlled a certain neighborhood and was sponsored and protected by powerful businessmen and politicians who used them as their private street army.

When the Brazilian Republic was proclaimed in 1890 and capoeira was officially outlawed, an even more violent and deadly police persecution started, destroying capoeira in Rio, but not destroying capoeira in Salvador.

A bit later, in the early 1900s in the city of Salvador, capoeira had been absorbing elements of dance, ritual, religion, philosophy, playfulness, and music (including the berimbau) from the different African cultures in the state of Bahia. With this broader and deeper dimension, capoeira became a sort of "cultural weapon" used by the African slaves and their descendants to reinforce their identity and resist white society's domination.

Salvador's capoeira, using this alternative strategy, survived the violent police persecution and continued to develop "underground" and become stronger (unlike capoeira in Rio) until the 1930s, when finally capoeira's practice was once again permitted by the state.

In the 1930s, Getúlio Vargas took over power and became dictator in Brazil and remained in power for the next two decades. He wanted to construct a new "Brazilian identity" based on "hard work" and modern (at the time) technology and industry. (Brazil was still an agricultural and cattle-raising economy, and most manufactured articles had to be imported from abroad at a very high price.)

Vargas understood that capoeira could be part of this new Brazilian face and identity. But certainly not Rio's capoeira maltas (or the scattered few malandros, streetsmarts, that persisted after the maltas were destroyed by the police in the late 1800s). And not even Bahia's capoeira of the 1920s and 1930s, practiced by the valentão (tough guys), always mixed up in streetfights, whoring, gambling, and drinking. So, as we have seen, Vargas permitted only a "new" (and controlled) capoeira, to be played exclusively in "closed places" (not in the streets, markets, squares) with specific and written police permission.

Mestre Bimba, in the 1930s with his Centro de Cultura Física Regional (Regional Center of Body Culture), and Mestre Pastinha,in the 1940s with his Centro Esportivo de Capoeira Angola (Capoeira Angola Sport Center), took advantage of this new breach and "offered" a "new" capoeira (in fact, two).

Though Pastinha's and Bimba's ideas and values were different, both used a "seduction strategy" towards established society to gain space for capoeira and the black man. This occurred despite the fact that Bimba's Capoeira Regional had a sports/violent edge that was not so evident in Pastinha's Capoeira Angola.

It was this capoeira from Salvador that much later on, in the 1950s, and already divided into the two main currents, Angola and Regional, expanded throughout Brazil, and in the 1970s, already "upgraded" by the work of young mestres (teachers) in Rio and São Paulo (Brasil's two biggest towns), traveled to America and Europe.

By the 1970s this growth of capoeira (which now included teachers in Europe and America) progressed similar to an avalanche that starts with only a couple of rocks and later carries everything in its path. Just to give you an idea: in the 1960s, when I started capoeira, there were not even half a dozen academies in the cities of São Paulo and Rio; today (2006) there are between two and five thousand of them in what is called "the big São Paulo" (which includes the outskirts absorbed by the city's growth to total more than ten million inhabitants), and between one to five thousand capoeira academies in Rio de Janeiro.

Today we estimate 25,000 capoeira teachers in Brazil (and around 500,00 players); 500 in North America, and 500 in Europe (with some 1,500 players each).  Some claim that we can double these numbers.