Capeira Visitors Etiquette
BY RAPOSA - Last week, an acquaintance of mine, let's call him "Lou" asked me where and when my angola group held classes, because he was interested in training. Lou is a fellow foreigner in Brazil (though not from the same country as me) and capoeirista of 5-6 years experience in a well-known and excellent contemporanea capoeira group. I gave him the info and he showed up at the next angola class and proceeded to make an idiot out of himself.
He showed up late, five minutes after the class had started - not exactly a great first impression. He asked the instructor (Daniel) if he could train, and Daniel said "Go ahead and jump in, but let's talk afterwards." After we finished stretching, Daniel put half the group on the bateria and had the other half split up into pairs to play. I was paired with Lou. He was rushing, playing a tad too fast for the relaxed berimbau toque, and I tried to slow him down and keep the pace of the game from accelerating and becoming aggressive. Although I was marking rather than completing my attacks, I clearly had the upper hand in the game; I was confounding and trapping him with my movements and marking him far more often than he was getting me. He was also playing weirdly: he would go for some really cheap shots on me (sudden foot to my face while I was upside down was one of his favorites), but then do strange things like not even bother to attempt to dodge or divert my chapas de frente (a.k.a. bencao), just standing there as I marked the kick right to his stomach.
Later we switched partners, and Lou's new partner started to make some justified corrections/suggestions on his game (which I had refrained from doing since I felt it wasn't my place). But instead of accepting and learning from this advice from a more experienced player, Lou started to get defensive and feel like he was being picked on. He also ignored advice from Daniel (who was going around observing and giving tips to everyone) and continued being a bit of a jerk in the games.
When the bateria changed hands, Lou asked to play berimbau. Daniel gave him the pandeiro instead. Lou felt slighted. Daniel made some gentle corrections to Lou's pandeiro technique, which irritated Lou because he thought he was already a pandeiro expert. And yet, once the bateria got going, Lou kept messing up on the pandeiro. Daniel had him switch instruments with me (I had been playing agogo), which Lou saw as a "demotion." This is when Lou stopped singing and started sulking - everyone else was putting their heart and soul into the music and contributing great positive energy, except for him. As soon as the atabaque player left, Lou dropped the agogo and jumped on the atabaque, where Daniel also made some adjustments to his technique. The subsequent expression on Lou's face made him look like he had just drank a caipirinha without sugar. After class ended, everyone gathered around the water cooler, chilling out and chatting about how great the music was. Instead of joining the conversation, Lou immediately grabbed the gunga and started showing off his berimbau skills, looking disappointed when no one paid him much attention.
Daniel went over to him and explained the group schedule and policy: namely, that he's welcome to train, it costs 30 reais a month, and that the group doesn't accept people who continue to actively train with other groups in the city - Standard Operating Procedure. I missed most of the conversation that followed, because I was talking with other people, but I could hear that Lou was getting all hostile and defensive, thinking that the angoleiros thought him inferior because he came from a contemporanea background, defending his group (which no one had attacked), claiming that he felt that Daniel sang "Eu sou angoleiro" to pick on him during the class, and other nonsense. He eventually ended in a huff, with the statement, "Well, I want to train angola here, but if you guys don't want me, well then that's it's up to you."
The reaction he provoked among the members of the angola group was more puzzlement/amusement than irritation; during his little post-training outburst, everyone had this look on their faces that said, "Dude! Why are you acting like this?" Later on, one of the group members told me, "I just didn't understand Lou! Did you guys get what he was so upset about?" I was embarrassed on Lou's behalf, and also a little annoyed since he was there at my, well, not exactly invitation, but I was the one who directed him to the class, so I felt like it reflected badly on me. It's like if you invited an acquaintance to a dinner party at your friends' house and your acquaintance turned out to have really bad table manners.
Angola and regional/contemporanea are different languages. Like Portuguese and Spanish, they have a ton in common in terms of roots, structure, and vocabulary thus enabling their speakers to communicate but undeniable differences in tradition and "flavor." If you speak one language well, you can't just assume you're an expert in the other.
I think that's what it came down to in Lou's case - ego. It's tough to go from your own group, in which you're considered one of the top dogs, one of the "good" players, and enter into a group of a different style, in which you're a beginner. Believe me, I know how difficult this is, because I went through it - I'm still going through it. One has to swallow one's pride, one's thinking-one-knows-everything-and-is-hot-stuff, and be humble and willing to be taught - after all, you're learning a different style, and you can't learn anything unless you let yourself be taught. My personal experience is that if one shows humility instead of being a know-it-all with an attitude, one is respected wherever one goes.
Written by Raposa, aka Shadowcat. Raposa is an American born capoeirsta who has trained for some time in Brazil. She now resides in NYC. You can drop by her My Space page. She is also involved at the online capoeira store Tienda Bahia.
This article hasn't been commented yet.
Write a comment
* = required field