Speak and be heard.
Capoeira Angola with families is more than an opportunity to cartwheel and kick. It’s a practice that integrates physical, emotional and historical learning. It takes all of those things we learn (or don’t learn) in schools and puts them in the context of real lives and real people. And, yes, there are cartwheels too…
Shouting out these young kings bringing these positive vibrations. Get ready for your Monday like this…
Black, Brown, Colored: Education
By Njoli Brown
In Wisconsin a school asked its student body to list “3 good reasons for slavery” (along with three bad ones).
Another school, in South Carolina, decided to take its students on a field trip for Black History Month. Activities included: picking cotton and singing slave spirituals…. Yes, you read that correctly.
It was only this February 2019 when a school in northern Virginia thought it would be a good idea to teach about the Underground railroad by playing a “runaway slave game.”
There’s no way around it. There are some people who are too damaged to keep from letting their racism shine through. That being said, you don’t have to ride that train.
Before even starting though, as the adults in the room, this work needs to begin with teachers and parents—deepening our own understanding of the history, paying attention to the broader context, considering the children’s developmental age, and clarifying goals in doing this type of education.
On the site Teaching Tolerance are provided a list of “key concepts” which it seems would be important to consider and reconcile with before jumping into the deep end of a conversation about the racial, social and economic foundations of slavery with your young people.
Key Concepts
- Slavery, which was practiced by Europeans prior to their arrival in the Americas, was important to all of the colonial powers and existed in all of the European North American colonies.
- Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the economy across British North America and, later, the United States.
- Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860.
- “Slavery was an institution of power,” designed to create profit for the enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism.
- Enslaved people resisted the efforts of their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in both revolutionary and everyday ways.
- The experience of slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of slaveholding and gender.
- Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War.
- Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs of Americans about race and whiteness, and white supremacy was both a product and legacy of slavery.
- Enslaved and free people of African descent had a profound impact on American culture, producing leaders and literary, artistic and folk traditions that continue to influence the nation.
- By knowing how to read and interpret the sources that tell the story of American slavery, we gain insight into some of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.
I wanted to provide a few start up resources for those of you who are genuinely interested in teaching about historical and modern day slavery in a way that is held in empathy and authentically speaks to the trauma of the institution. There are tremendous amounts of materials out there and hopefully some of these act as an inroad and inspiration.
A list of 60 books recommended for the classroom and as background reading for parents and teachers on the history of slavery and resistance in the United States. This lists provides materials relevant for all ages, from child through YA to adult. These aren’t just books to drop in a room but to act as a catalyst for art projects, writing projects, debate and discussion. I’d also refer you to this article from the Chicago Tribune “Slavery In Children’s Books: What Works?”
2. The Passage — Researched & Written by Fern Lewis / Directed by Dale Gooding
An animation which explores the slave trade and the journey of the Trans-Atlantic voyage. Wonderfully written and narrated. This is not “G” rated. There are some deeply emotional themes here. It is a film you should pre-screen in order to determine the appropriateness for your class’ age range and prepare for the depth of conversation needed to to process it.
3. Teaching Hard History Podcast
“What we don’t know about American slavery hurts us all.” From Teaching Tolerance and host Hasan Jeffries, Teaching Hard History brings us the lessons we should have learned in school through the voices of leading scholars and educators. It’s good advice for teachers, good information for everybody.
4. The ABCs of Black History
The history of African people did not begin with nor did it end with slavery. It’s just important to educate on the continuance of this journey, acknowledging the identity of a people as more than just their epochal social status.
Do you have more resources to suggest? Drop them in the comments.
“It is of crucial importance for every American to understand the role that slavery played in the formation of this country, and that lesson must begin with the teaching of the history of slavery in our schools. It is impossible to understand the state of race relations in American society today without understanding the roots of racial inequality – and its long-term effects – which trace back to the ‘peculiar institution.”
– Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University Professor, author America Behind the Color Line –
Read more:
U.S. Students’ Disturbing Lack of Knowledge About Slavery
U.S. Schools Failing to Teach History of American Slavery: Report
Take 2 steps
onto the cloth
Kente
and gold, black
green, red
Spirit in the soles
through the spine
all unknown and completely familiar
no artifice
and to real to be called dance
Pads of the feet
soaking in gold, black
green, red
By Njoli Brown
I’ve recently returned from another visit to Seattle. Pastinha Weekend, an event that the International Capoeira Angola Foundation hosts annually in order to acknowledge our lineage, to reflect on the roles of revolution figures of African descent and to reconnect with our family and friends. The weekend was beautifully put together and had all the richness and love that I’ve come to expect from these gatherings. As an educator though, I wanted to reflect a bit on Mestre Silvinho’s standout capacity to create a nurturing environment within which his group seems to have truly flourished.
Holding space as a mestre of Capoeira Angola, as a teacher and as a mentor presents a wide array of challenges and rewards. Profoundly, this person is both, responsible for the maintenance of a centuries old tradition and, simultaneously, must assert the viability of traditional culture in contemporary society. It isn’t enough for them to deny the existence of the word in which they live but they must also have a critical and evolving vision of how to reconcile the humanity of their community with the society wherein they function.
What make Silvinho’s model so particularly distinct is the feeling of mutual respect that he propagates within his collective. Not only does he humbly distinguish himself as a remarkably knowledgeable and responsible patriarch, but he so clearly and openly recognizes the strengths and hopes of the members within his group.
That being said, while he provides the trajectory, his group drives its own forward motion. As a teacher the best example we can often set is in our capacity to allow leadership to disseminate throughout. True, there is no one else who has the capacity to teach capoeira at the same measure, but their functioning grant writing commission? The healthy foods project? Their regularly organized occasions for fraternization? The youth projects? All of these are student inspired and driven.
Fertile soil for seeds to grow. Inspiring to see things come to fruit Northwest.
Kojo X Johnson of Bambu Station& FICA DC talks back to 5 Questions from Njoli Brown at NoPaper
…
I resist classifying my music. First it’s very hard to nail down. I feel like I’m all over the page sometimes when it comes to my inspirations. I have several approaches to music and I think each of them are a genuine reflection of who I am musically. Being multi-lingual/multi-cultural I tend to code switch a lot….maybe that’s what’s reflected in my music as well. …….
Back to the issue of classification, I think the term soul most fully identifies what I am influenced by and what I strive to give to my music. I am a soul singer, on a roots man trod if that makes sense. I’ve heard my self compared to soul singers like Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, even Smokey Robinson … A good friend and great singer/songwriter once said I was like Otis Redding (or some other soul singer) in Bob Marley’s band. I think that’s a colorful way to sum up what you’re hearing and when you think about it that’s a huge accolade.
My most natural stylistic instincts come mostly from the soul and gospel music I grew up on. as I’ve matured and expanded as an artist and as a person I’ve incorporated the influence music from other parts of the black diaspora like reggae, samba reggae, bossa nova, and even capoeira music. I feel completely comfortable flowing between what are considered “separate” genres because for me they all are expressions of diasporic soul. There’s a classification for you: diasporic soul. I think that’s the best yet.
…
I think what reflects me the most in my music now are my lyrics. I spend a lot of effort trying have my lyrics reflect reality, to tell the truth about what I see, no matter how simple or massive. I can admit now that I probably wasted a lot of time struggling with writing because I was trying to sound as profound as possible while simultaneously trying to stay out of the middle of the story. I was trying to splash lyrical color without getting any on myself that would show everyone exactly who’s life, experiences, observations was behind the song. I think my creative honesty is what reflects more of who I am now. Also, I’m more confident of my purpose and my vision these days. I trust one-hundred percent the music coming from inside my head, from those higher regions. I know what it is i’m supposed to be saying musically and what it should sound like.
Many creative people will tell you that that’s where the battle begins, getting the end product to reflect and honor the inspiration for the project. Early on, when I found my medium of expression I was so overwhelmed at the gift and opportunity to be an artist somehow responsible for storytelling about the human condition the possibilities for expression seemed endless and it was hard to know which instinct to obey first. I think my creative processes reflect that I trust my instinct fully now, even when my ability takes a few steps to catch up.
…
In a vague fashion, I would say that my life’s experiences and personal struggles have really brought me to where I am. First, I think what I’ve learned through doing a lot of youth and community development work in the inner cities and even in the “out there” ( Brasil, the west indies, Cuba, Mexico and Africa, southern and west Africa) communities, the things I’ve seen in my work abroad have really changed me forever and burned certain messages into me that come out in my lyrics…some are reflections of what i saw and experienced directly (eg violence in the streets, police corruption, the floor of a foreign jail cell) some reflect peoples stories that i heard while working in the community as an anthropologist studying violence. as bad as things are, people still live such courageous lives of resistance and resilience.
Capoeira really inspired me to conquer my fear of public speaking and singing. The mestres of FICA (Fundação Internacional de Capoeira Angola) have always encouraged everyone to sing out, you know, put the feeling on the outside to generate and cultivate the axe of the roda. I come from a family of gifted musicians, producers, and singers. I always wanted to make music like I saw my cousins doing in North and South Carolina (see: Lendon James, “Pappy” Mckoy, Gayle Fairley, Reel Mob Raab, Robert Fairley, Jr and sooo many others i haven’t named here) …music that moved and stirred people,…inspired them. ….. growing up on soul, gospel, country, bossa nova, rock, jazz, funk…. the little known truth is, I tried to run from being an artist at first, partly because of the negative stigma put on the artist around me at the time. as a young brother without much apparent support it just seemed like a hard trod to be a musician but still I knew I wanted to be a part of that divine calling, that elite society.
I’ve read that artists and healers feel the peaks and valleys of life more intensely than the average person… there have been when I’ve gone through so much pain it dragged me down. so far down that the music was the only thing that allowed thing that would carry me back to the heights. It got to the point where I had so much to reason about with people out there music was the only thing that allowed me . eventually, I kind of adopted songwriting and performing as a way to communicate what I was seeing and feeling since it allowed me the freedom and opportunity to reach out to so many people.
Who is Bambu Station?
Bambú Station Band | bambustationband.com
Virgin Island roots reggae band Bambú Station was founded in 1996 by the impassioned lead singer Jalani Horton. After years of performing live, Bambú Station established its own recording studio and recorded and released its first album ”Congo Moon” (High Rotation Records, 1999). From the album the popular song “Heathen Fun”, was selected for a two-CD remix compilation entitled “Walking on Pennsylvania Avenue”, a major relief effort for children with AIDS in Washington, D.C. (www.opensource.com).
In 2000, Bambú Station independently released the critically acclaimed single “Amadou Diallo” in memory of the New York slained West African immigrant. The band personally presented the single to Diallo’s parents at the 2001 Anniversary of the March on Washington. In May 2002, Bambú Station reached global acclaim with their invigorating compilation “Bambú Station presents: Various Artists – Talkin’ Roots I” (Mt. Nebo Records). This groundbreaking album immediately charted worldwide, generating international praise from music critics and radio DJs, and was selected as “Compilation of the Year 2002” by Ireggae.com and won several music awards.
With the release of their album “One Day” in 2003, The Beat Magazine, Reggae Reviews, Urban Ambience Journal and countless other reviewer’s dubbed Bambú Station’s “One Day” as one of the most significant albums of the modern reggae scene. By the years end, with all the attention garnered,“One Day” was selected as “Album of the Year” by both the DC Annual Reggae Awards and Creation Steppin’ Radio. Additionally, the D.C. Annual Reggae Awards selected “One Day” as “Song of the Year 2003” and Bambú Station as “Producer of the Year 2003.” Fans, writers and industry experts all continue to praise the album as “classic”, “very powerful”, and “one for the ages.“
Since its first tour in July 2004, Bambú Station’s fan base has exploded beyond measure with every album and tour. Their Talkin’ Roots Tour 2004 was the first ever tour of a group of Virgin Island reggae artists on the U.S. mainland. The band also headlined at the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, released “Break The Soil,” “Talkin’ Roots II,” “Chant of the Lions I” and toured the U.S. mainland solidifying their soul-stirring brand of music.
Through its Bambú Station Foundation, the band is proactive in efforts to positively impact the lives of families, with a focus on children. In November 2006, the prestigious Strathmore Music Arts Center in Bethesda, MD (www.strathmore.org) selected Bambú Station for its Artist In Residence Program, the first reggae band to be selected.
Bambú Station has since performed throughout South America, Europe, North Africa and the Caribbean and Pacific Islands. In 2012, Bambú Station released “Children of Exodus” and their first music video, “Leaning On Afreeka” in 2013.
In 2011, Bambú Station returned home to the Virgin Islands and opened Griotlife Studio in Rockas City, St. Thomas. Jalani Horton has been producing several projects and artists scheduled for release in 2014 namely, The INNER LIGHT PROJECT featuring Various Artists.
the Bambu Station Co.
P.O. Box 3981, St. Thomas, VI 00803 | 202-321-2263
By Marian Dalke
It is a freezing cold night in Brooklyn. Disoriented after a 12-hour flight from Salvador, Brazil I seek refuge in a warm bowl of soup at a smoothie bar on 5th Ave. My lentils pale in comparison to the exotic foods advertised on the menu. Açai: superfood Brazilian berry and Pitaya: the newest anti-oxidant cure-all. I smile to myself. For the past four months I’ve been eating açai, pitaya, cupuaçu, abiu, jambu and other “exotic” fruits grown by my friends. Now all I want are some good old lentils.
I am reading a book in Portuguese, the men at the table next to me are speaking Spanish, and talking to me in English.
What world am I in?
What world have I been in?
Traveling through Mexico, Central America and Brazil for the past four months has kept my mind spinning in a mix of languages, foods, cultures and questions– about globalization, appropriation, race and humanity: who we are, what we are made of, and how we try to be different. I’d like to use this article as a space to explore some of the experiences and questions that came up for me, about how to preserve – and yet ethically exchange — traditional cultures in a globalized & commodified world.
I had been dreaming of this trip for 7 years. When I was eighteen, working and traveling in Central America for seven months, I had promised to return, to re-visit the people and places I had come to know. I told myself I wasn’t going to be another “irresponsible” tourist, showing up in someone else’s country, in someone else’s life, having an “experience” and then peacing out. As I fleshed out my plans, the trip adopted other purposes. Studying tropical plants and food traditions, improving my Spanish and Portuguese, and training Capoeira Angola (an Afro-Brazilian martial art) would all strengthen my work as a food justice organizer and ally in Philadelphia’s Latino communities.
While traveling, I inevitably crossed paths with many others like myself: people from the global north wintering or living in Latin America, claiming temporary residence there. I asked them, as I kept asking myself, “Why did you come to Guatemala? What are you looking for in Nicaragua?” “Why are you in Brazil?”
The sense I got from the answers to my questions was that we had come to the global south in search of a culture and life style we found lacking in our home countries. We had left corporate, isolated, stressful lives to learn and live a whole variety of alternative practices: permaculture, yoga, capoeira, tai chi. Some of us came for spiritual clarity by finding our Mayan astrological signs, or having our cards read by a bruja in Nicaraguan town of Diribá, or to speaking to the Pai Santo to grant us our Orixá. Some of us were looking to buy land, to start intentional communities, development projects or cooperatives – because land is too expensive in the US. I felt most challenged by foreigners who had bought land abroad. Do new ageists make up the next wave of manifest destiny, I wondered, with Latin America as ‘virgin’ territory? I mentioned this to a friend of mine back the states. “Why didn’t you stay there,” he joked, “Weren’t in the colonial mindset?”
There is also deep irony here. While people from the global north are flocking south to “find themselves,” many people living in these host countries continue to strive for the dominant u.s. culture that is constantly imported into their communities. I met many Latin Americans eager to practice their English, proud of buying their own cars, flat-screen TVs and Xboxs. I can’t tell you how many people were excited to bake pizza with me. Many prefer shopping at the supermarkets and shopping malls than the outdoor markets that I was eager to get lost in. Many were looking to leave behind the same cultural practices that folks from the u.s. were so desperate to adopt.
And of course there are those who are familiar with both sides of the border and both kinds of life. Enrique is a friend of mine from a tiny town outside Veracruz, Mexico who lived and worked in Northeastern Ohio for several years. I asked him how he thought the quality of life compared in the united states and Mexico. Enrique replied that it’s different. In the u.s. it’s better in regards to money and material wealth, while in Mexico health, lifestyle, and family unity lead to a better kind of quality of life. So again, those of us in the global north fed up with consumerism and unhealthy lifestyles flee south in search of a ‘better’ life while those in the global south, many with real material needs, continue to push north in search of material wealth to support their families and create a ‘better’ life.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. Where do we draw the line between useful, mutual exchange between cultures and appropriation or exploitation? I’m not convinced that mutual exchange is even possible given the power inequities among countries, the histories of colonization, imperialism and resource extraction.
As someone who’s always been eager to learn about and engage with cultures different than my own, I believe that we need to shift from european dominance, to stop holding up european ideals as the measure of success. I believe it is important to understand and view our lives through other cultures and cosmologies. Even so, I’m continually challenged about how to do this ethically, without reinforcing imposition and oppression.
These questions are particularly acute for me as a white woman practicing Capoeira Angola. As part of my trip, I spent three weeks training in Bahia, the birthplace of this Afro-Brazilian martial art, dance, conversation, and resistance practice. Brazil is home the largest population of African-descendents outside of Africa, due to the slave trade that brought from anywhere from 4 to 10 million enslaved Africans to work in sugar plantations. Capoeira evolved from coming of age rituals practiced by peoples in Angola and other areas of Southwestern Africa and served as a means to disguise their training from the plantation owners and overseers.
Today, capoeira is a major export of Bahia. Tourists head home with tiny berimbau necklaces around their necks, pictures of themselves posing with capoeiristas doing backflips beside them, and caxixis made exclusively for the World Cup. The Mercado Modelo in Salvador, the site where enslaved people were detained before being sold, is now a tourist trap, with capoeira demonstrations out back and thousands of knick knacks to waste your money on. In an extremely blatant example of black face, you can stand in the Praça da Sé behind a mannequin of a Baiana, with all the ingredients for acarajé spread before you – another great photo-op for facebook.
In these ways, I saw capoeira being used in Bahia as a commodity. What does that mean for a cultural practice created by enslaved people to resist colonization and oppression? Once African enslaved people were treated as a commodity, and now their practice of cultural resistance has become one as well.
At the same time, this prevalence of capoeira can be seen as a celebration and embracing of Bahia’s African heritage. And the capoeiristas playing in the Terreiro de Jesus are entrepreneurs clever enough to capitalize on tourists’ curiosity to make a living by playing capoeira. There’s always a both/and way to view things.
There are those committed to preserving Capoeira in its original form and purpose. In an attempt to grant capoeira legitimacy, the late Mestre Pastinha is responsible for moving Capoeira Angola from the streets into the academy. In many ways in the US, this shift has taken capoeira from its base as a people’s art and made it elite, available only for those able to afford to attend classes (often in liberal arts colleges, which is how I began practicing it). Although establishing a place in the academy may help preserve Capoeira Angola, it has also confined it. Mestre Cobra Mansa of FICA spoke of how capoeira is losing its originality, with everyone training and learning the same form, the same movements. The creativity and spunk that came from the street is getting lost.
Another Mestre I met in Bahia dedicated to both preserving and propagating Capoeira Angola is Mestre Boca do Rio. I attended the “Voltas que o mundo da” event held to celebrate his return to Brazil after living in Spain for many years. Mestre Boca do Rio framed the conference around the theme of the globalization of capoeira. During a panel discussion, he expressed his concern with the quality of capoeira that is being exported and taught. Mestre complained of Brazilians traveling to other countries and falsely claiming to be experts in capoeira. With its global popularity, many imposters arise to fill the increased demand for teachers.
My critique of capoeira’s globalization centers more on all the white people practicing capoeira (myself included). I would like to participate in more discussion of this among our groups. What does it mean to be a European-descended person practicing an art form developed by enslaved people to resist white supremacy? Given the parallels between the u.s. and Brazil in their experience of slavery and racism, I find that it makes sense to me to practice Capoeira Angola here. In the united states, I find Capoeira Angola as site for anti-oppression work. Within my group, we form deep friendships of mutual aid and support through training together in this African-descended practice. In a recent interview, my teacher Contra Mestre Kamau shared his own thoughts on this:
Clearly, I’m an African and this is an African Brazilian martial art and it’s only right that you have people who share that lineage, culture and connection and spiritual energy in your circle. I’ve always wanted that and I still want that but that’s not the only component to creating a positive and workable energy and it took me a lot of time and thought to gain the maturity to recognize and understand that. That was a big thing for me.
What then, of capoeira in Europe, where groups are primarily white, and don’t share “that lineage, culture…and spiritual energy?” When I asked this of a French woman training in Bahia, she replied, “We all are enslaved to something,” she told me, “We all have things to be liberated from.” I believe this: we all have obstacles, challenges, and forces that hold us back. Capoeira can help gives us tools to confront such barriers. Yet the fields on which we play are not equal, in large part because of the awful, crushing violence and abuse of slavery and the resulting legacy of racism.
I witnessed lots of alternative lifestyles and resistance practices throughout my travels Latin America. Despite hip hop being a major capitalist industry, it is alive across the world as a form of resistance and justice. I witnessed a dope hip hop battle in Puebla, Mexico among three youth spitting about respect (though homophobia still was rampant in their lyrics). I was also excited to see another alternative culture taking root in Mexico, as I watched a troupe of roller girls out recruiting new members and lots of goth kids hanging out in the zócalo. One bizarre cross-cultural moment for me was practicing tai chi aerobics and eating vegetarian food with Salvadorean Taoists in San Salvador.
Aside from those adapting and embracing cultures from abroad, many of the friends I visited while traveling are actively preserving their own cultures. Werner teachs Nahuat, an indigenous language almost extinct in El Salvador. Roxana, who is proud to be a professional and a campesina in Nicaragua, prefers to cook with firewood and wash clothes by hand. Jerry buys stones mined ethically around Nicaragua and incorporates them into his jewelry. Paulinho is busy working to build a cultural center in his hometown in Northern Brazil as a venue for regional music and a platform to engage folks in community organizing.
I believe it’s important for us to know our own cultures and be grounded in them as we encounter and exchange with cultures different than ours. To have roots to return to. I must know my own history, and understand the reasons why I am interested in learning other cultures’ histories and practices.
This isn’t the kind of thing that will have a conclusion. It’s about conversations and wrestling with unjust power dynamics – on international and interpersonal levels – towards genuine mutual exchange and growth. It’s about sitting at the table with people who are like you and people who are different, be it in front of a bowl of açai or lentil soup, and working together to figure out who we are, and who we want to be, as individuals and as a world. I pray only–as people continue to travel, to search, to exchange and fuse cultural practices–that the source of revolution and resistance stays present and alive in the cultures we share.
OUTTAKES:
Exoticism. Early colonizers, anthropologists, studying the “Other” living with people different than them.
How is capoeira’s exportation different than that of yoga?
Yet sometimes being in another culture reinforces who you are. You aren’t cognizant of being US when you live in the US. Need to be an other to realize who you are.
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Even so, this search for ‘modernization’ can be deceiving. Take El Salvador for example. Long an unofficial colony of the States, El Salvador has used U.S. currency since 2001. People often attribute their economic decline to the americanization of the currency. When I asked two friends what they were proud of their country, “nothing,” they both replied. They felt it had sold out, and had no more culture to respect. The presence of gang violence is so thick that people live in fear of picking up the phone, of going out. I heard countless stories of threats made on the phone, hold-ups on buses, shootings in internet cafes, kidnappings. And it’s known that this gang violence yet another U.S. export, as a result of racism experienced by Salvadorean immigrants in California in the 1980s (source from Karen?). “I like Nicaragua,” my friends told me, “it’s safer there. You can trust people.”
Nicaragua, in contrast to El Salvador, has a long history of resistance to U.S. imperialism, with resistance William Walker’s imposed government in the 1850s, to Sandino’s presence in the 1920s, to the contra wars in defense of the Sandista revolution. When I asked two friends from Nicaragua about their pride for their country, they stated they were proud of “our indigenous history” and “that we are free.” (Even so, Nicaragua is fast modernizing. Deal with china to build canal through lakes the open it to free market and more abuse- opinion that canal will just benefit china and not nicaragua)
What are we looking for? How can we possibly find ourselves in cultures different than our own?
By Njoli Brown
An Interview with Contramestre Kamau Blakeney of the International Capoeira Angola Foundation – Philadelphia
Capoeira has become more and more popular worldwide over the past couple of decades and the U.S., as one of the first recipients of that legacy outside of Brazil, has a developed a pretty profound history and community of its own. It’s been a question that’s come to me and one that I’ve pondered many times, “what is it about this practice that affects us so deeply?”
Now, I can’t even say how long it’s been that I’ve know Kamau. I mean, we’ve both been running these circles together for at least 15 years. But I was glad to finally have a chance to sit down and ask him some questions after having put my thoughts together. Kamau, one of the founders of FICA Philadelphia in 1998, was recently promoted to contramestre, but long before that he was holding the role of story keeper.
CMK: So what’s up man?
Nj: Nah, man. I just wanted to get at you and see where you were in your thought process nowadays. I was thinking just the other day that I didn’t know how you came to capoeira or how you came up in it. Not knowing how you got exposed or came into contact with Mestre Cobra 1 Mansa.
CMK: Ha, well you know, stuff just gets kinda, kinda blurry. I don’t know if it’s just me. Maybe I’m just kind of blurry now, just older and blurry. I don’t know, but Atlanta, that was a real strong channeling point or centering point for me.
Nj: Wait, you were down in Atlanta?
CMK: Yeah man, yeah ’cause you know I was in undergrad down there at Morehouse and before I finished I was training a style, well it was kind of a combination of styles, with a group of brothers called Kupugani N’gumi. They were some older brothers and they had put together something almost like a little monastery where they had several disciplines and they all rotated and trained together. Some kats were focused more on the internal martial arts like Qi Gong and Tai Chi and breath work and you had some other guys who were really strong on bone conditioning and that kind of thing.
I remember this one elder who used to wear these big brass ankhs around his wrists and he would flip them around and they would hit on top of his hands and he would use that for conditioning. He had two for his legs that he would swing around in kicks and they would swing back to hit the shins. I mean, this dude, man, rough dudes. Old guys, 50 and up, just rough. I don’t know if you’d call it a system or what but it was like, peace in one breath and they could take your life in the next.
There was another kat who I was training under at the time , his family was part of one of the old black circuses. So in the context of what they were doing they used a lot of acrobatics in their martial arts. The family name was Vita I think and his sons, they used to do a lot of these balancing routines. Like man on top of man-high, on top of another man-high, going like three or four guys up. So, you know, the bigger the son, the lower the position, hahaha.
Nj: Right, right, haha.
CMK: So you know you got this big linebacker son on the bottom, mad cock-diesel, thick necked dude. One diesel on top of the next until you get that last one on top balanced either hand on top of the head or feet on shoulders. I mean these guys are like superheroes, and all the sons are talented.
Nj: Dude, we are suckers! Why are we not doing that in Capoeira? Hahaha.
CMK: That’s what I’m sayin’! But the thing was, when you talk about it and get into how did I first get interested in some Capoeira, those were the first dudes that had me doing handstands.
Nj: Ah, okay…
CMK: The thing was though, these guys had that training that was all about going from that two hands to one supporting the balance. So it was from them that I learned the balance line from one hand to one opposite leg. I was still quite new so I wasn’t doing it in the middle of the floor but I have some photos from back in the day. some quote/unquote “selfies.”
Nj: Back before they even had “selfies…”
CMK: Yeah, man. I’d have the bulb in one hand, other hand on the ground, upside down, and take these old black and whites. Dreads down on the floor and all that.
But you know, really, that period was my first quality time with martial arts. That’s what really got me started. 6am trainings out in the forest, doing a lot of Tai Chi and a lot of breathing work, a lot of discipline work. Some of the styles were very much like Kung Fu but they focused in a way that felt related back to the continent of Africa. A lot of the styles they were using had these similar constructs but somehow they were centered around animals found in Africa.
Kamau’s daughter, N’daia, comes into the room and crawls up onto his lap. She’s got this winning smile and radiates this special kind of sincere magic. It’s got some old soul and young soul tied up in it. She’s coming in from playing out in the most recent Northeast snowstorm. Father and daughter have this special kind of connectedness that’s so far past language, it’s a pleasure just to observe it for a moment and remember why Kamau sometimes gets the nickname, AngolaBear.
CMK: Now, around ’94 capoeira was starting to kick off in Atlanta and I met Mestre Cobrinha and was seeing the capoeira because Jamie (Brown) 2 was down in Atlanta gettin’ it in.
Nj: Was Jamie down with Mestre Cobrinha in the beginning?
CMK: Yeah, Jamie knew Cobrinha because of his relationship with Themba (Mestre Cobra Mansa’s 1st contra mestre in the U.S.) from their time playing Capoeira Regional. Now, I don’t know about the transition for Jamie but at that point Themba was already a contra mestre or mestre in Regional. I think Jamie might have known Cobrinha from his time out in Cali and somehow by the time he came back out east he had decided to train Angola.
He built a really strong base out in Atlanta and, you know, it was definitely that really African centered model. It was clearly a closed type of situation. In some ways really similar to the thing we had when we started out in Philly out at Ausar Auset 3. I mean, really, the same thing was going on in DC. Things were different then.
Nj: And when you say closed off, meaning, the focus was much more afro-centric and the people who were getting involved with it were those who were more down with a deep kind of African or African-American activism?
CMK: Right, right, and you know, that’s what it was. I remember they used to train at this one facility they had that was set up for parties and social gatherings, had this large stage and there’d be like twenty kats in there and they’d be training strong. I mean, they weren’t doin’ any bobo movements either. You know, they were on their macacos 4, armadas 5, bananeiras 6, all that. I mean the movements, they were looking crazy strong. The singing was beautiful and strong, although they did have a lot of challenges with staying on beat and that kind of thing and, also, that Brazilian Portuguese. You know, it was coming outta that element of “Why do I need to speak Portuguese? What’s the point?” which has, at times, had a contingent particularly among African-Americans in the game.
But, you know, my father had passed in ’95 and I had to move back up to Philly right away. And at that time, I wasn’t looking for Capoeira specifically but I was looking to reconnect with the community, ’cause the African activist community in Atlanta was extremely strong.
Nj: So, you were involved with Capoeira down in Atlanta all the way until you moved back up to Philly.
CMK: No, no, not really. I just found out about it down there. Because I was down there doing photography. I was dancing and all of that. Some of the guys who were dancing were getting into that Capoeira thing on a more “open background” tip. You know, you’d see them doing there thing and then do that… what’s that movement called? That handstand movement. That dancey, where they go up on one hand and kick their legs over to one side like…
Nj: Oh… Amazonas.
CMK: Yeah, yeah, you’d see people rockin’ that and it’d be like “Aww, what you doin’?” “Aww, you don’t know nothin’ about this.” Hahaha.
Nj: Hahaha, yeah yeah yeah.
CMK: Yeah, man, a couple of dudes would be out there battling and throw in some Capoeira moves and then be back to dancing and everybody’d be like “Wooah! What what!”
I’ll never forget this kat I used to go to school with. He was a poet, this kat, Saul. He’s like a legend in Brooklyn now, this kat, Saul Williams.
Nj: Yeah, man. I know Saul Williams from a whole bunch of time he used to spend out in the Northwest. He’s friends with my boy, Ezekiel.
CMK: Yeah, we went to undergrad together and I’ll never forget, I’d been away for a little while up in Philly and hadn’t seen him in a minute, came back down to Atlanta and he and I were at this club and he was like “Yeah, wassup, what you know about this?” and he did some movement and, you know, I’d been training at Ausar Auset for a little while. So, we’re out there in the middle of the dance floor doing our thing and I think I caught him with a little rasteira or something and he was like “ooooh…!”
Nj: Right right right
CMK: But I mean, this was way back in the beginnings of everything. You know, those good times. So, but really, I didn’t get involved with the Capoeira scene down in Atlanta ’til I’d been playing for a while up in Philly and had come back down south on some visits, ’cause Atlanta was really like my second home, especially post high school and I missed it terribly.
Nj: But let me take you back to Philly for a minute. So, you’d headed back up there after your father passed and…
CMK: Yeah, and actually Akin was the first kat I saw doing Capoeira up there, and that was at Ausar Auset. He was actually just out there by himself. You know Uraua had been (and is still) the head of Ausar Auset in Philly and had also been a student of Joao Grande for a while. So, he was teaching a class in Philly. I had just come by, not even for Capoeira, but because there was an Ausar Auset in Atlanta and I wanted some good vegetarian food, and the one in Atlanta was a kind of market as well.
Meanwhile, I just see this dude in the back practicing with a chair. He’s doing his negativas 7 and roles 8, you know, and it was Akin. So, I was like “yo, what you doin’?” But you know Akin, tryin’ to be all “secret squirrel,” humble-style. He was like “yeah, there’s supposed to be class but there’s no class happening, so I’m just doing my thing.” Anyway, I just kept bothering him about it and he told me about class and I was there, next time they had class, probably a week later. And that’s how I started, sometime late that year in ’95.
Nj: And so he was already connected up with Mestre Cobra Mansa? And was that how you made that connection with him?
CMK: We didn’t really make that connection with Cobrinha ’til about, maybe, a year later, ’96 or ’97.
Nj: Ah, okay. So how was that? How did that happen?
CMK: That happened because originally we were getting support from Mestre Joao Grande. Because, again, Olua had been a student of his. So, Olua would bring or invite down Joao Grande and some of his older students, like Gordon and Eric and some of those guys and they would come do workshops with us. It was a good relationship but there were two main challenges: Mestre was already starting to feel his age a little bit, feeling the cold weather, the coldness of New York and all of that, so he didn’t really like travelling that much or travelling that often. Also, the cost was expensive. It was majorly those two things and that slowed our progress.
Also, as capoeira started getting more momentum in DC and in New York, it started to open the door for more people. And, by more people, I mean more non-Africans and I think at Ausar Auset they were progressively becoming more uncomfortable with that kind of open door policy because they were wanting to maintain a more corpo fechado 9, espaco fechado 10 type of vibe. Opening up that door, politically, it was just a lot for them to deal with combined with the fact that Africans here in the states didn’t have the same sense of what it meant to be black or African in Brazil. And the Brazilian mestres were approaching things from a perspective that was relevant to their own experience.
Nj: So you’re saying it was an unfamiliar kind of complexity, not more or less, but… unfamiliar
CMK: Right, and those complexities around race and culture, they began to bump heads, particularly through the late ’90s and early 2000s. Anyway, Uraua had other responsibilities which left us to cultivate the group he had started and around this same time Cobrinha came in.
I don’t even know how this happened but somehow we were informed there was an event going on, like when Cobrinha was first starting up FICA (Fundacao International de Capoeira Angola). They had an international event, this was ’96, in DC.
Nj: So this was FICA and not GCAP (Grupo Capoeira Angola Pelourinho)
CMK: Nah, this was FICA. By this time it was FICA, ’cause that severing I think happened during the year before in ’95 or ’94.
Truth be told, at that point I was pretty oblivious to all that. I mean, my portuguese was on some old O sim sim sim, O nao nao nao type joint.
Nj: Right, haha
CMK: I got Camujere under my belt and I’m just tryin’ to make a dollar outta 15 cents, haha. I barely had my first berimbau 11 by this event. So, and you know, I’m crackin’ up right now because our classic joke was… well… you know Jamal?
Nj: Yeah
CMK: Yeah, we were in DC for tht first workshop/conference thing, walking up New York Ave., trying to find Howard (University) and we saw this dude, this whino, and we’re walkin and I’ve got my berimbau. I think I got it from Mestre Themba and it wasn’t in the best of shape. I mean, I got it for like $40 and it was playable, it just had some small cracks, but I mean, I could barely arm it. But we were walking with ’em like walking sticks, had the cabaca 12 in my bag, and we kinda startled this whino dude and he jumped up “Yo! Hold up! What y’all doin’, Jesus and Moses?” Hahaha!
Nj: Hahahaha!
CMK: Ask Jamal when you see him next time and see if he doesn’t just crack up. It was classic. And, you know, we looked at each other, ’cause at that time the events were in the summer, like June… July. So, you know, we both had our sandals on, some canvas bags, the dreadlocks…
Nj: Yeah, you were comin’ on some old Good Times: Black Jesus type joint.
CMK: Anyway, ’96 was the first event that I went to and it changed my life, clearly.
There were a lot of mestres here. A lot of kats who you don’t see around much. I remember seeing (Mestre) Angolinha and he was just runnin’ through people. He was being his kind of crazy self and rollin’ that whole “oh, you’re too good for me. I don’t really know what I’m doin'” thing and then just smashin’ kats up. Then, my man (Mestre) Rosalvo, I’ve only seen that dude maybe once or twice, I remember seeing him play and, I barely knew Mestre Cobrinha, but thought that he played just like him. Mestre Braga was there and a lot of other hard core dudes. This might have been the first big event that they did, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not sure but I remember this one was high powered.
Nj: So, that was a big turning point for you.
CMK: Yeah, I just made a commitment to see Cobrinha more, to have him see my face and decided to connect with FICA Bahia. That was huge in terms of flipping the switch on and having me deal with Brazilian Portuguese. When I got down there in ’97 there wasn’t aaaanybody! I mean, very few foreigners and no English, like none, and it was hot! Ridiculous! They didn’t have the space that they have now. They were actually at the place that N’daia goes during the summers, Casa Via Magia. (Mestre) Boca do Rio teaches over there now. They had class outside at night, I mean… it was wild, man. It was wild.
The first two years were really my groundbreaking, my time for getting a sense of what this was really all about.
Nj: Were there times outside of this that you would recall as pivotal in the development of your relationship with Mestre Cobra Mansa? I mean ’cause, Cobrinha, Mestre Cobra Mansa is who you’d consider your mestre, right? Or am I wrong in this?
CMK: Right.
Nj: I ask because in FICA we do have a few mestres who frame the story for us and, for some of us, we still have a particular mestre who we trained with, who we learned from and who we would consider our reference. So, I’m curious if you see a moment or epoch that really established this relationship between you and him.
CMK: I mean, yeah, I guess it was about that time in DC, DC and Philly.
Nj: So, you were going to DC really regularly?
CMK: And he came to us. I guess where I had dropped off for a second was where this relationship with Mestre Joao Grande started fading and, all of a sudden, entered this kat. I mean, it was kinda like “enter the cobra.” This kat came in, this “tumbleweed” kat like “I’m down! I’ll sleep on the floor. Just gimme a hummus sandwich and I’m good.” You know, ’cause Mestre Joao Grande comes with a little entourage and there’s a lot to take care of but Cobrinha’ll just roll up on the bus. He’ll have his falafel sandwich and he’s good. So I think we developed a relationship really early because I could see right away that he was going to do whatever it took to get you to understand what this was all about. He’d come up a lot, staying two days, one day, a few days and we would regularly travel down to DC to get smacked around by those dudes down there. He would invite us for weekends that he would call “special trainings.” It’d be like this intensive like a little mini-conference where we would spend the whole time training together, eating together, talking together. You know the kind of thing we’ve done. Those were the kinds of things that let you know that this kat was giving you the best that he could possibly give of himself. That’s how we cemented that relationship.
The flip side of that though is that, I spent so much time with Cobrinha here in the states but spent very little time with him in Brazil. Most of my time in Brazil has been spent with Mestre Valmir. Al these things that Mestre Cobrinha was talking about I couldn’t see them, couldn’t visualize them, even while he was trying to give me background. But when I got down there (Bahia) that’s when Valmir would be like “oh yeah, that’s so and so and such and such.” And I’d be down there at these events and seeing people who were comparable to Mestre Cobrinha. Because, you know, for a while when you’re in the states you get to thinking that…
Nj: You’re like “that’s it.” That’s the top of the top
CMK: That’s it. These guys are the baddest. Period. The point is though, that they’re still the baddest and… there’s other people who are the baddest too.
Nj: Right.
Kamau gets a call from somebody who’d weathered the storm to get to class. I mean a foot deep snow in Philly! Who does that?
Nj: So it’s interesting, you talking about these ideas that were expressed to you by Cobrinha, and then seeing them manifest in Brazil. You also talked a bit earlier about how some of the racial encounters that were going on in the states were very different. You know, we recognize that concepts on race relations are diverse, whether you’re talking about from the perspective of African Americans, Africans, Brazilians or any of us descendants throughout the diaspora because of our varied histories and experiences. So I’m curious about how you felt about the different roles race has played in your Capoeira experience, whether that means in the context of FICA or Capoeira Angola or whatever.
CMK: Well, my foundations were and are in activism and Africanist thoughts and theory. I grew up with that and it got even stronger when I got to undergrad. Coming up here (Philadelphia), the community, it’s not as large and the culture is more… northern, not as connected, not as… friendly. So it’s much easier to cultivate oneself down south. Here, you can still feel isolated, can feel like there’s beef between organizations that actually look like or seem like they’re supposed to have the same motives. You don’t have that so much down south. Up here you grow into a kind of aesthetic of toughness. People don’t share space as much. There’s kind of a different vibe.
I remember our first years playing Odunde, ’95 or ’96. It was black people, playing Capoeira , black folks, and I remember there was one year that Cobrinha came and he had some guests with him and some of them were white. It shook a lot of people, there was a kind of embarrassment. I think people were caught up in this idea that maybe the crowds not feeling us this year, some old “Oh, I thought this was this. Why you got them with that?” The challenge was a fear that we wouldn’t have this feeling of being at home anymore or of having a community that would support us. After you’d do some demo, your hope was that people would want to come learn more about Capoeira and that year maybe the thought was we would finish and people would be like “I don’t want anything to do with that.”
It was a difficult transition and I know in my own group we had a separation of thoughts and ideologies. There were people who thought that kind of integration was a threat to a kind of African centered thought and people who wanted to make sure that anyone could train, white, black, whoever. Those two camps became very polarized and, the truth is, none of those people are training now. For me, when I looked around I realized that no one was left. It ended up being a big transition for me, realizing you can spend all kinds of energy worrying if all the people in your group look the same or acts the same or has dreadlocks or eats the same food or any of that. You just have to make sure you have quality people that can stay committed, can make sacrifices without complaining and can be consistent and can be depended on. That’s how you figure out your go-to people.
Clearly, I’m an African and this is an African Brazilian martial art and it’s only right that you have people who share that lineage, culture and connection and spiritual energy in your circle. I’ve always wanted that and I still want that but that’s not the only component to creating a positive and workable energy and it took me a lot of time and thought to gain the maturity to recognize and understand that. That was a big thing for me.
From another perspective, in Brazil, nationality is very important. But here I am, here you are and we both teach Capoeira Angola. So, someone can flip the script and ask a similar question. “How do you feel being from the states and teaching Capoeira?” I know exactly how that feels and have had the experience of some Brazilians looking at me like “watchu talking about Willis?” and not understanding what right I have to connect with Capoeira on any deep level.
Nj: You know, when you talk about this question of why people choose to get involved with Capoeira, I think one of the things that’s distinguishing about this art is the diversity of people who come to it. There’s this question that often gets asked of me and I want to put it to you. Some people decide to get down because they’re just really interested in music, or they’re dancers and think the movement is really dope. Some are just down with the anthropological aspects and think that as a cultural activity it’s really engaging. But in addition to all of that I think we often express that it is equal parts, cultural device, music, dance and martial art. I’ve heard our mestres and others remind that if it loses it’s martial aspect (or any of its others) it stops being Capoeira. One of the things that often seems obscured or abstract is this martial aspect.
So how do you go about conveying that martial spirit and what are your thoughts about Capoeira in terms of practical relevance? In a world that is very much inundated with martial arts that are focused on physical practicality, how does Capoeira fit into that?
CMK: Well, in regards to the first question, when you’re in the middle of teaching, a quick martelo to the neck will reinforce the martial spirit of the thing.
Nj: Hahaha! Yeah, I guess so!
CMK: If you didn’t know what you were signing up for… we’ll remind you, hahaha. You know. But I mean, I’m joking but I’m not. You have to know that this is very important and it’s not to be played with. When I’m with my students and it’s all jokey-joke this and that… sometimes you gotta put somebody on their behind. We (teachers) have a lot of responsibility and you have to do it the right way. But you have to put people on their behind sometimes. That might be with a chapa 13 or a rasteira 14 or boca de calca 15 or cabecada 16 that reminds them to pay attention. It reminds them that as much as they like beautiful movements and taking notes, and they like to learn about kinship and lineage and all of that, that’s not going to stop someone from kicking you in the chest. You don’t train ginga with your pen and paper. The expectation is no different for you as a dancer or a musician or an academic or a martial artist…
Nj: Because you have to be all of those things.
CMK: Right. So I think letting people know that we need all of those elements or else it stops being Capoeira. I couldn’t agree with you more on that. You have to make people to play people they don’t go to dinner with after class. Let them play someone that doesn’t know them or someone that has very different intentions than them. Provide opportunities for people to deal with difficult situations without just walking out of the roda. Have to set up challenges so that they have the chance to meet them.
And on that other point…
Nj: Yeah, on that relevance point. Because I feel like that’s a real particular mind, being able to translate things into real world application, particularly if that’s part of what their intention is, a martial art.
CMK: I think within Capoeira Angola there’s a smaller skill set that relates to that street application, self defense type aspect. It’s not all of our movements. It’s not macaco, it’s not relogio 17. It’s the understanding of the balance of a person, knowing where their weight is and being to throw them off with a kick or a or even a push. But we don’t have a whole bunch of movements that you want to spend a lot of time thinking this is going to be your bread and butter in the street. We have some very effective movements but you have to really know what you’re doing and be in the right situation. You have to have some level of mastery.
Nj: I know that Mestre Moraes did a lot of work to distinguish Capoeira Angola as a relevant martial art particularly during a time when it was the common view in Brazil that Regional was the only one with any practical usage and Angola was just purposed for older people or cultural demonstrations. So being able to speak in terms of martial arts, this question/conversation comes up.
CMK: I think Capoeira is something that people have to be able to see, feel and taste. They have to be able to push up against it and push back on it to have a real sense of it. Part of it comes from witnessing, part comes from pushing your boundaries and part of it comes from conversation. I mean, in a confrontation, you’re not going to limit yourself to just one thing. I mean, we don’t use our hands (in Capoeira) but in a conflict, once you do that cabecada, hey. You know, people are not looking to respect the “rules” of your martial art, so you have to shake your students into recognizing that.
But that’s definitely something to think about it.
Nj: Yo, man, thanks a lot for making that sit down time and you know we’re gonna get up real soon.
CMK: Yeah, brother.
Nj: Stay up.
1. One of the Founding mestres of the International Capoeira Angola Foundation, Student of Mestre Moraes of GCAP 2. Jamie Brown has had training with M. Cobrinha/ and M. Moraes and at one time led a very strong Capoeira Angola group in Atlanta. Many of Jamie’s former students are teaching or still training Capoeira today. 3. The “Ausar Auset Society” is a spiritual organization that incorporates cultural practices that relate to principles from ancient Kemet ( the original name for Egypt- meaning “land of the Blacks”) Philadelphia has a chapter along with D.C., Atlanta, and N.Y. 4. Macaco – re: Capoeira = monkey jump, back handspring 5. Armada – re: Capoeira = back, spinning kick 6. Bananeira – re: Capoeira banana tree, handstand 7. Negativa – re: Capoeira = escape movement 8. Role – re: Capoeira = rolling escape movement 9. closed body, protected body 10. closed space 11.traditional bowed instrument played in Capoeira 12.bowl shaped resonator made from dried gourd 13.Chapa – re: Capoeira = push kick 14.Rasteira – re: Capoeira = leg sweep 15.Boca de calca – re: Capoeira = grabbing the pant cuffs to initiate a throw 16.Cabecada – re: Capoeira = head butt 17. Relogio – re: Capoeira = clock, spinning flourish movement
By Njoli Brown
Black History isn’t a February thing. I think we’ve all realize by now that it is a history interwoven into the story which brings us all to our here and today. I recognize the import of establishing a time to focus on a legacy that has been overlooked for the better part of, well, a loooooong time and continues to be. But still we lock it into that one month and refer to it as an anomalous affair as if it’s an opportunity to recount fairy tales. Whether we want to look at our African-American legacy or the innumerable contributions of African peoples over the ages, how do we break that bind that maintains a continually segregationist account of the human story? Truth be told, I’m sure I don’t have the answer.
But this year I’ve decided to make a practice of establishing black history as a substantial and integral part of world history and world history as part of every day’s social study in my classes.
Get it started….
