Capoeira Quotes

Capoeira is everything the mouth eats.

Capoeira is treachery.

The impossibility of one person completely capturing capoeira, yet its potential to be touched by anyone are part of the balance of power and beauty of this magical art.

Capoeira e para homen, menino e mulher, so nao aprende quem nao quiser.
[Capoeira is for men, women and children; the only ones who don't learn it are those are those who don't wish to.]

Eu sou discipulo que aprende, [I am a student that learns,]
E mestre que da licão. [And a master who teaches.]

A venerable capoeira once said to me: "I wished to be a dancer and I could not be. Today I dance in capoeira. I wanted to be a fighter, so I fight in capoeira. Because I want to be an artist and express myself, have self-esteem, and be a real human being, I am a capoeirista."
For us capoeiristas, the jogo do capoeira transcends each occasion of its actual performance and translates to every moment in the life. Capoeira is not a costume to be worn and taken off according to the situation or tournament. It is our own skin. We carry it all the time. We are cats, rats and monkeys, ferocious and gentle beasts in cavalcade through the many rodas of life. We are clowns, masters and slaves of the art who regain the freedom of ourselves only when cooked in the cauldron of Medea which is the jogo in the roda.

Na roda de capoeira, [In the capoeira roda]
Grande e pequeno sou eu. [Both great and small am I]

Capoeira is not only a combination of gymnastics, dance and martial arts but also music, culture, history and knowledge. The capoeirista learns to balance the physical with the mental. One learns the instruments and songs. The capoeirista is a historian. The capoeirista is all of these.

Capoeira is the culture of the oppressed!

The flame of this beautiful art is now in your hands. You can dampen it, you can burn yourself or your brothers and sisters, or, afraid of its heat, you can let go of it. I hope that you take good care of your capoeira and kindle this fire alive and powerful, enlightening your life.

Once upon in time, someone asked Pastinha
What was capoeira
The old and respected master
Kept silence for a moment
Searching his soul
Then answered calmly
Singing a ladainha
Capoeira is a game
It's a toy
It's to respect (your) fear
And to measure well (your) courage
It's a fight
It's a mandingueiro's trick
It's the wind in the boat
It's the lament in the senzala
It's your body having the chills
It's a well played berimbau
The laugh of a little kid
Capoeira is the flight of a bird
It's the attack of coral snake
[It's] feeling in the mouth
The sour of danger
And smile at your enemy
Shake his hand
It's Zumbi's shout
Echoing in the quilombo
It's stand up from a fall
Before touching the ground
It's hatred
It's just borned hope
The slap that hit the face
And hurt the heart
It's, after all
To accept the challenge
With desire to fight
Capoeira is just a little boat
Alone in the sea waves

We need to be in the actual life, the real life, because capoeira is fundamentally about the roda of life.

Life is a struggle? Life is a battle?
The player sees that capoeira is teaching him to dance within and during this fight.

Quem aguenta tempestade e rochedo. [Only cliffs face the tempest]

Valente nao existe [The fearless don't exist]

...Capoeira can be a tool in the First World, a tool against the forces that tend to turn people into robots that do not think, do not wish, do not have any fantasies, ideals, imagination or creativity; a tool against a civilisation that increasingly says one simply has to work and then go home and sit in front of a TV with a can of beer in hand, like a pig being fattened for the slaughterhouse.

My message is that they have to embrace capoeira with all their hearts because capoeira has a lot to offer to the people who dedicate themselves. The more you devote to capoeira, the more capoeira will return to you.

A good capoeirista of course likes everything of capoeira: the beats, the berimbau, the game; everything else is secondary. Today a lot of capoeiristas are very arrogant, vain and these are negative aspects. A good capoeirista is humble, polite and he knows that all the other capoeiristas are brothers and human beings.

Menino, quem te fez? [Boy, who formed you?]
Quem te deu tanta guarida [Who gave you so much shelter?]
Quem te mostrou a beleza [Who taught you the beauty]
De dançar dentro da briga? [Of dancing within the fight?]

Bater papo com otario e jogar conversa fora
[Chatting with a fool is a waste of words]

Capoeira and Spirit
As all is Spirit, the capoeirista's movement is the motion of Spirit.
The leaps and swirls and surges and flow of God's body.

And in that flowing wave of deadly dance,
Is present the truest essence.
Rise and fall, yin and yang, head and heart.
Self and Other as one,
The All.

Here, Now.
Glimpses of one's own freedom,
Ineffable.

Today capoeira is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Only here in my school this year I have already graduated 20 capoeiristas that are teaching outside Brazil. Other groups are also growing around the world, capoeiristas travel with their berimbaus, their poems, and capoeira shows them the way. Capoeira brings them places, it gives them confidence. Capoeiristas don't make capoeira, quite opposite: it is capoeira that makes capoeiristas. And if you make mistakes, sooner or later capoeira will make you pay for them.

Tu tens problema em casa, não vem resolver aqui..!
[If you have a problem at home, don't come here (to the roda) to solve it..!]

Capoeira has always been rich and beautiful. We find everything in capoeira: life philosophy, self-defense, art and culture. We find part of religion in capoeira if we seek it. The word religion means 'to re-link oneself,' so everything to which we link ourselves would be a religion. We shouldn't learn capoeira in order to cause trouble with it, but instead use it in the hour of defense when necessary. After all, in its life philosophy capoeira is love, celebration, and also joy.

For thousands of years, survival was linked to our ability to kill and destroy. Today and in the future, survival will depend on our capacity to live in peace with other men and with nature. Modern man needs to reprogram his mind. He needs to channel in another direction the energy used in war and in the killing of other men and animals.
We think capoeira can make a contribution to this process.

Capoeira will never be free from prejudice, because it is an extremely dangerous political weapon; in the whole history of the Brazilian people it has appeared as a weapon of rescue and of citizenship. Because of this, it was always marginalized and made the victim of prejudice; the governments have done a thousand things since the colonial era. Capoeira has appeared as a crime of vagrancy in the Brazilian Penal Code, and people have been sent to the penal colony on the island of Fernando de Noronha for being capoeiristas. The Paraguayan war is another example: capoeiristas were sent to the front lines of battle in order to be exterminated - they formed the 'barefoot platoon.' And this persecution has not ended; the only thing that has changed is the Brazilian government's form of exterminating capoeira. Today, the government uses the strategy of sponsoring some and excluding others, thus dividing the capoeiristas and transforming capoeira into a commercial enterprise.

Grupo de Capoeira Angola Pelourinho's objective is to guide its members in the way in which we should understand society, having the battles of the African and Brazilian peoples as references. This will lead us to understand why the capoeira roda, capoeira itself, the game of capoeira, is a symbolic representation of the larger world. It is very difficult for the capoeira mestre to teach this, and it's very difficult for those who don't feel capoeira - those who see it as something meaningless - to understand it. This is why, when I teach capoeira, I show that it is an instrument of resistance of oppressed classes seeking a just and equal society.

Capoeira is the fight of dancers. It is the dance of gladiators. It is a duel between comrades. It is game, it is dance, it is dispute - a perfect symbiosis of force and rhythm, poetry and agility. Unique in that the movements are dictated by the music and the singing. The submission of strength to rhythm. Of violence to melody. The sublimation of antagonisms.

In capoeira the contenders are not adversaries, they are 'camaradas'. They do not fight, they pretend to fight. They seek - cheerfully - to give an artistic visage to combat. On top of the spirit of competition, there is a felling of beauty.

The capoeirista is an artist and an athlete, a competitor and a poet.

After the open persecution at the end of the nineteenth century, capoeira's history in the twentieth century has been marked by repeated attempts to standardize and control it, as well as disputes about its origin and definition - as folklore, as sport, as black and/or popular culture, as a tool for the battle against racism and in search of social inclusion. Given the absence of public policies for capoeira, what happened 'spontaneously' starting in the 1960s was the expansion of segments that classify capoeira as a sport. These segments adopt positions and practices that are in tune with the purpose of expanding the businesses aiming to win a space for capoeira in the market of "physical culture." Similarly, we also have the attempts to insert capoeira in the profitable world of sporting competitions.

One of the most worrying aspects of this whole process concerns the attempts to reduce capoeira to a single definition, or in other words, to regulate capoeira according to a vision that imposes a single model that aims to become dominant. This model is well exemplified by the assertion that 'capoeira is just one.' This logic does not recognize the existence of diverse styles, lingoes, approaches, and applications of capoeira. In practice, this means imposing upon many mestres and capoeiristas the adhesion to the concept of capoeira as a sport.

What does it mean (to me) to be a capoeirista?
Someone put this question to me recently, so here's what I came up with:
= To play with and enjoy the energy of your camaradas.
= To conduct yourself well in the roda and in the world.
= To respect your fellow capoeiristas and all other people.
= To be always learning and growing.
= To face your fears and weaknesses, and overcome them.
= To keep a cool head under pressure.
= To be ready to fight if you have to.
= To oppose oppression and strive for freedom.
= To learn about the history, traditions and philosophy of capoeira.
= To express yourself through your body.
= To train hard and push yourself beyond perceived limits.
= To experience Afro-Brazilian culture.
= To share knowledge.
= To be a musician and a singer.
= To be wary, cunning, playful, courageous, shrewd, spontaneous,, unpredictable, ready.
= To flow.
= To avoid arrogance, envy, loss of temper.