Interview with Nestor Capoeira
In the spring of 2002, Nestor Capoeira visited New York City for the first time. He came to teach a two day capoeira workshop and give a lecture about his insights into the capoeira game. Nestor is familiar to many people for his ?Little Capoeira Book?, often the first bit of capoeira literature they buy. Nestor Capoeira is in fact the author of four books, three about Capoeira, and a fourth one - a novel. Nestor, we discovered, also just finished his PhD, studying the globalization of Capoeira, and it?s relation to nomadic power structures. His lectures turned out to be illuminating discussions of capoeira.
In this interview, we ask Nestor about his upcoming book, and about the globalization of the Capoeira game. Planet Capoeira will be posting the transcriptions of the two lectures he gave during his stay in New York.
I spent time not only with Nestor during the workshops and his lectures, but enjoyed a number of meals and a few bottles of wine with the esteemed mestre. What I discovered was that, far from so many cookie cutter capoeiristas of today, he comes across as the last of the old time malandros, who embraces the capoeira game not for technical brilliance, but rather with the art of the trickster to get at, and play with the truth. This interview, conducting over a good meal and not a few bottles of wine at a fine Italian restaurant in New York City, taps into Nestor?s four decades of Capoeira, and served to radically change the way I thought about the Capoeira game. I am honored to share my experiences with you.
Q: Could you tell us about your new book?
The little capoeira book as I see it is a broad view, a general plan. For the beginner this is very important, because you have a general context. You see a simple history nothing too complicated - Something about malicia, the rules of capoeira, so that the person understands the philosophy that is behind it. There is also some information about the music, not going in too much detail but I say something about how the three berimbaus come together, and so on. The basic method of learning and the important thing is my way of teaching capoeira. Of course, every capoeira teacher things there way is the best (laughter). That?s the Little Capoeira Manual. ("The Little Capoeira Book" is the english title - ed.)
This second one, "The Roots of the Game". I pick up some very specific parts and I go deeper into them. Physically it has 380 pages or something like that. What I did there is I did some interviews with some people whom I admire very much, like Muniz Sodre. He is an Afro-Brazilian guy from Bahia, he has a very high place in the most important Candomble groups in Bahia, so he really understands candomble. He studied with Bimba in 50's. But he's a scholar, he does karate sill to this day, and is very much in shape. He?s the head of the Post Graduation of the PHD program at the Communication Division at the University of Rio de Janeiro. He speaks 12 or thirteen languages. He has been studying the media for a long time.
So I ask these guys like him [sic], and guys like Jair Moura, another capoeira player who did that movie with Joao Pequeno and Joao Grande in the 1950s and has a few books written on Bimba and Itapuan...I interviewed these guys, and I did a chapter on each one and asked each one, "What do you want to talk about?"
One, for example, said he wanted to talk about the period of 1810-1830, because it?s very important in the history of the African cultural influences and slavery. So I did a chapter on each one, and then I wrote my part and then I gave it to them and they made commentary. And those commentaries are there in the book too. It's a book that has my contribution, the strongest thing is the points of views of these others guys, as they are specialists, and have chosen to talk about specific periods or contexts in which they have unique knowledge of.
I myself, went a bit more into malicia, insights into this part of the capoeira game and some training exercises that relate to this understanding of malicia. I discuss some training exercises that I use in my training that my sons use. Exercises for someone who already has five to ten years in capoeira. To keep your game sharp. Mostly upside down floreios and tesouros, especially when you are on the ground and some one who is standing up tries to take advantage of the situation, and how do you go to the ground to attract the person to attack you from that position, and then take advantage of them. That?s the second book. I like it very much. Of my three books it is the most complete.
Q: You say that teachers have their own approach to Capoeira. Your original teacher was Mestre Leopoldina. How did his approach affect your understanding of the game?
I stayed with Leopoldina only a couple of years and then in 1968 I went to Group Senzala. I was 22 Years old and stayed from 1968 until 1990. So really the biggest influence on my teaching method until ten or twelve years ago was the teaching method used in Senzala. That was an approach I built with my colleagues in Senzala, guys who are my age, and then the newer guys who came after and gave their contribution. Leopoldina's method was completely different, it wasn?t as structured. His classes were a lot of fun. You developed a lot of creativity and improvisation. But the technical development was slower, what you would learn in three or four years, you would get in one year in a group using a methodology like we used in Senzala. But in those three or four years you have the creativity and a higher capacity to improvise.
These methods that we have created in these things, not only in what I call Regional/Senzala style, but also in the development of Angola. They (students) develop very quickly, but after three or four years they don?t improvise any more. In the beginning they improvise because they make mistakes! (laughter). So even in Angola they do this - ?"put your hand like this, your head like this, this movement we don't use", etc. (Modern) Angola has absorbed, or has been influenced, by this thing Bimba created.
What I have been trying to do since 1990, when I left Senzala because I wanted to try different things, but I left in a diplomatic way. Because I didn't want to use graduations, no more uniforms. I did not have that you oblige the pupils. I did not force obligations onto the pupils. I wanted to get rid of the idea of like "I belong to this group, or to this clan". I wanted to do something more cool, more relaxed. I don?t mean the training.
The training has to be strong. But the obligations to the group - I decided to drop that. I thought about how could I reintroduce elements of teaching that Leopoldinha used and which the Angola guys used through the 60?s. How can I reintroduce that method, keeping the elements you had when you learned capoeira from the street, like you learn to use a bicycle. Not the type you get in a structured class that you meet four times a week?.
So I started to think I had to create exercises of improvisation, for example, very simple things that sometimes people who are doing capoeira feel they are ashamed to do because they think it?s silly. For example, try just moving around one another standing up without giving blows, but without ginga or the cliche's of moving. The same thing on the ground. You walk like a cat, moving around the person without using negative, role - very simple things like that. That worked very well because you develop a method different from what is going on. You need five or ten years to have pupils from that method and then you can see the result of what you have done. And the results are like my sons, Itapua and Bruno, who in my opinion they are not the best players in the world of course, but they are very good players. But they have this skill with improvisation. They can go to an Angola place like we did when we went to Joao Grande's academy recently. He played everyone there, and he has his own style, which is not Angola, but he adapts. Because his movements are more free.
I think I did a little step in that direction, which has worked. If my sons go to a place where people play hard, they play hard as well, no problem. I am not saying everybody should do this. I think all the tendencies of capoeira that exist nowadays, of the capoeira group as a clan, the thing with Angola stylist saying they are traditional, carrying on the real Traditions. I think all of these things need to exist because it keeps different possibilities for people who have different personalities to find there own space that is more close to their personalities. But for me, I found that after I was twenty-five I have now created my own particular space as well.
Q: Now that Capoeira is becoming a global game, what do other cultures bring to the art? What is the European influence? Or the American?
This is yet another thing. It has a relationship. All of these different styles of capoeira were forged in the same cultural context, which was, first, Bahia - with the Regional and the Angola formed there. Then in the 1960?s the contribution that the local groups that trained in Rio and Sao Paulo gave to the capoeira scene. Because the mentality of Bahia is different from the mentality of Rio which is different from the mentality of Sao Paulo. Not only the did the form of the game change a bit, but it even got more nasty, and guys would say that motherfucker copied me! Everybody playing much the same way - some better, some worse, but very much the same. In the Regional / Senzala style, in the acrobatics for sure, in Angola style the same thing. But now when capoeira goes abroad, I believe that even the movements of the game, and the musical part is not going to change that much, but obviously the contribution is going to change very much.
I think, for example, with the Europeans, I know what?s going to happen, they value very much history, culture and all that - this will be a major thing in capoeira to know the history, the culture, the books. To pursue PhD's in it, etc...Someone who is in capoeira will have to do that in the future. I mean at the time when I started, in the 1960's, many top guys from Bimba did not know how to play berimbau or the instruments. They did not care. It's the same for many Angola guys at that time. The berimbau was something played if you wanted to. But then later in the 70's and now the 90's and forward, when you get to a certain cord or a certain level, you HAVE to play the berimbau. It is now part of learning capoeira you have to know how to play the Angola rhythms, the Regional rhythms. In the future, with the European culture coming in, you will HAVE to know the books, the research being done. The thing gets a bit more complicated (laughter). Complicated, no, more holistic - a very fashionable word these days. It embraces even more things that it embraces already. The negative part is that you will get these guys who are scholars, like me, (laughs) who have PhD's and will start to pull the thing to the side and this knowledge will be more important than the game itself. Like people from Angola or Regional think that their style is more important than the game itself, when the game is the thing. All these other things are illusions - things that people do on top of the main. This is the positive and negative contribution from Europe.
As for the United States? I want to know more about this. But what I have heard, and seen so far, I think they will bring a technological thing - videos, CD-roms, books, you get things on the internet. This is something that has a very positive aspect as well, because you will be able to listen to, for example, Joao Pequeno, Joao Grande, Acordeon words, even this interview I am giving now to you will be accessible on the internet. This is a great thing. But the negative part I believe is the lack person-to-person contact. Like you and me. We worked out already, we have gone out already. We start to not only exchange ideas, but because we are together, we feel how the other person is, how the other person does his game in life, and we steal , if we are smart, the best parts from the other person's game. I think this will be lost a bit. How many people are going to have personal access to Joao Grande? You have to go to his academy and you get something you don't get through technology. You absorb something, the malicia from that guy who has already been filtered from time. The old guys they have malicia that has been developed and filtered over a long time, and it's only in person you can get that. So that is how I see it. But you will have capoeira with the game, and around it many things that are there at your disposal. I think this is a marvelous period.
People always say "Ah, the good old times?" of Bimba, Pastinha. I think Bimba, Pastinha and all these old mestres - if they could live now, they would prefer it! Of course! The only things we have to overcome today are certain problems like lonliness in the big cities, too much consumerism. There are several traps in today's society that you can fall into. But in their time there were other traps as well. There was the police! (laughter)
Q: As the rest of the world embraces capoeira, will that make changes to Capoeira in Brazil?
I think, like I said the game will not be so affected. The rhythmic things start to have music in other languages maybe? I am doing a CD, it's not for capoeira, but with capoeira instruments, sung in English, French and so forth. It's called "Immoral Songs of Love and Damnation by a Decadent Capoeira Player". (Laughter) It's a bit pornographic sometimes. Like Tom Waits - very dark and depressive, like "I'm going to put a hex on you!? when a lover leaves you.." (laughter)
But anyway, what I think will change very much is the mentality and the power relationship between groups and people. Because everything has power relations. Like some guys like Michael Foucault (the French philosopher) says he understands life through the power relations. I think it's a little restricted, but it is a good approach as well. In Capoeira and Candomble some people see some beautiful, exotic primitive thing, and they think there the power relationships are more simple than what you have in a big multinational organization. On the contrary, sometimes it is more complicated, more powerful, more dangerous because in the multinational or bureaucratic institution there are rules, there are things in that hierarchy you cannot step out of or your fucked. In capoeira, you can go out and kill someone and they say "very good man, no one knew it was you." In the underworld, between the mafias. Like I said in my lecture the other day about nomadic groups. You want to understand capoeira? Look at the movies from Tarantino, or watch the Godfather. Only there the violence is bigger, and the art is smaller. But it is the same sort of thing - the treason, the thing you cannot trust. About tricking the other person, which is the teaching of capoeira. So one might think that capoeira, by Western standards, is something that is very bad. No. I think it is very neutral. It teaches you how to see inside things. The common citizen is very naive. I lived here (in the US) in '56-57. When I recall how adults related to power and government they were completely naive. But then after Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement - today the American citizen is not so naive. But anyway, the people who have power, I am not talking about governments, but people themselves, the owners, etc. they all know malicia very well, how to manipulate things very well, to their advantage. It is only the schmuck, the normal individual, who doesn't know that and they trust in these things.
There is an Americans saying that says if people knew how sausages and politics were made, they would not sleep well at night. (laughter) It's a wonderful phrase. So that's what does capoeira gives you - the insight into how sausages are made! (laughter). So with the contribution of Europe and the America, we will know how sausages are made in Germany, how McDonalds hamburgers are made in the US, in the metaphorical sense (laughter).
Written by Brian Donnelly. Brian is the editor of Planet Capoeira and the overall Planet Capoeira dude. Also known in capoeira circles as Pardal. Brian started training capoeira in 1996 with Mestre Bom Jesus in New York City and holds a blue-orange cord much in need of further seasoning. Brian would like to say he has beeen incredibly consistent in his approach to training capoeira, but then he'd be lying. He also has a personal, non-capoeira related blog known as The Miniblog.
This article hasn't been commented yet.
Write a comment
* = required field