Learning from Brazilian Culture – TV Clipping – RBI Notícias II

Pedro Pontes, the anchor of RBI Notícias (News) threw me some good questions in this part of the interview and we ended up discussing the ramification of Capoeira into different styles, the role of these different styles today, and the dialectic concept of ‘malandragem’. Controversial topics… My views, of course, are to a great extent, based on lessons springing from diverse sources: cultural, political and academic concepts, but also on my involvement with Mestre Suassuna’s take. In turn, Robson ‘Lagedo’ shared his views and participation in the project he helped to launch in Brasília.

I’ve always been wary of traditionalism, or say, narrow-minded takes on styles, and how they can hinder the development of identities more fit to cope with today’s problems of diversity intolerance. Unfortunately, for Capoeira, traditionalism is an increasing trend. Generally based on notions of authenticity and myths of purism, the cultural lineages that once bore ancestral wisdom, today fight for their share of Capoeira’s transnational market. And in doing so, they cannot (re)produce the sense of oneness once present among capoeiristas.

With these concerns in mind this part of our interview tackles how Capoeira can, indeed, educate. And how those involved with Capoeira as an educational tool must be aware of such trends and their risky consequences.
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Transcript RBI News Part 2:
Eurico:
By no means, what happens is that in Mestre Suassuna’s lineage we seek to play Capoeira without labels, but as in any working market today, knowledge is a tool to hold power, so people say: “Here I only play Capoeira Angola. I know everything about Capoeira Angola!” It’s these people way of controlling knowledge, and it’s radical. I think, and this is a very instructive analogy, that saying that a person is not able to play different kinds of Capoeira it’s the same as saying that people are not able to learn like saying that people are not to learn 2, 3, 4, 5 different languages. From the viewpoint of understanding the body, if one has a mastered body, one is capable of developing as many languages as wanted with one’s body, but for political and cultural reasons this division remains.

Pedro Pontes:
I see it in this way: you are a Capoeira Contra-Mestre, I’m sure it’ll be easier for you to learn other martial-arts, if compared with another person without any background in other fights. Are you a Contra-Mestre of Angola or Regional, or you don’t make such distinction?

Eurico:
I’ll make a joke… I’m a Contra-Mestre of the Cordão de Ouro Group.

Pedro Pontes:
Excellent response, perfect.

Eurico:
We play Capoeira without labels.

Pedro Pontes:
This is spectacular.

Eurico:
We promote encounters, events…

Pedro Pontes:
Your concern is with Capoeira in general, with all your counterparts, the effects produced by Capoeira, that’s what is interesting.

Eurico:
Recently we held an encounter in which we received students from our school in Sweden. Students from our academia and from the social project attended activities together. We involved all students in an event featuring Capoeira Angola and Regional classes. And, chiefly, we had contact with wonderful professionals from the cultural area. So, as a capoeirista (practitioner) I am, and as an Association we are concerned with the maintenance… I even think that the Angola-Regional division is productive because it rescues the cultural practices of Capoeira Angola, of that primitive form of Capoeira…

Pedro Pontes:
It preserves and perpetuates 2 cultures.

Eurico:
We develop training methods in our academia by influence of our Mestre…

Pedro Pontes:
Who is your Mestre?

Eurico:
Mestre Suassuna. And we pay a tribute to Mestre Bimba’s Capoeira. We play the berimbau rhythms in the way he used to play, we seek to adequate the student’s body language, their intention in each kind of game to each rhythm that exists within Capoeira Regional, we keep the instruments in the same way Mestre Bimba assembled them, but we do all that as a tribute, because it’s impossible to state that we play Mestre Bimba’s Capoeira, as we did not reached him in life. But we do it as tribute, once we know many of his students, and they told us: “Look, when I trained with him he taught us in this way…”. Mestre Bimba held classes for over 40 years, so it’s obvious that the Capoeira he taught in the beginning (of his career) was different from the one he taught at the end.

Pedro Pontes:
Of course! There is an evolution.

Eurico:
But what we can and should do is to bring many people to hold classes, to talk…

Pedro Pontes:
Exchange experiences.

Eurico:
That’s right. And within this exchange the guest teacher says: “In my time, when I was training there it was like this…”.

Pedro Pontes:
And we realise this, in those days Capoeira was much more slow.
E a gente percebe isso, a Capoeira daquela época era muito mais lenta. No matter how fast they wanted to express it. Today, a Capoeira Roda is crazy, there are times when we can’t even follow the players’ movements.

Eurico:
True.

Pedro Pontes:
Robson, you’re so quiet over there, but you’re also an instructutor. Are you a psychologist too?

Robson:
I’m.

Pedro Pontes:
Are you a student at the University of Brasília?

Robson:
I have a bachelors degree from the University of Paraiba and a Masters from the University of Brasília.

Pedro Pontes:
You got a M.A. from the University of Brasília, but what draw you into Capoeira so that you ended up joyning the Cordão de Ouro Association in Brasília?

Robson:
Actually, what draw me into Capoeira was the cultural side, this involvement with the popular culture is very strong to me.

Pedro Pontes:
And you already had this back then in Paraíba?

Robson:
Yes. After I moved in order to study I stopped training for a while because I couldn’t fit in in any group – here it kicks in the groups’ differences – We move on with studies, work, but we don’t forget this involvement with Capoeira. This is common among capoeiristas (practitioners). After a while, when I arrived in Brasília, I met my Mestre, Contra-Mestre Eurico, and then we begin to talk about Capoeira and this was very important to me at the time, and from there I joined the work. Today I support the association holding kid’s classes at the social project we run, and spending time together within this environment with different rhythms, with the chats about the culture.

Pedro Pontes:
It’s impossible to separate the game, the fight, say, from the music, the rhythm and the dance, ins’t true?

Robson:
True.

Pedro Pontes:
No way! It’s impossible to separate, because Capoeira has these moments. There moments in the class that I see that the kicks are been taught, the teacher has this concern to teach the kick and the game… But in other moments the teacher is concerned about teaching the student how to play the atabaque, to sing a song, to clap to follow the rhythm… There is this concern to orient the student… Because there is a certain stigma to Capoeira, that it’s something from the guetos, as it has been forbidden, but even today it still has a little bit of that, right? That Capoeira is a thing of the tough people…

Eurico:
Of ruffians, of rascals…

Pedro Pontes:
It has something to do with rascals, doesn’t?

Eurico:

Yes, it does. Unfortunately we still have some of this stigma, but I think today it is up to those teaching to present this in a different way. As you put it, we have some things that are unique, for example: We have a cultural manifestation, that is Capoeira, that when we watch a good game, we cannot understand whether they (the players) are playing, fighting, having fun… But, this is in a good Capoeira. Capoeira has a lot of symbolism, ritual… and all these helps people to express themselves. Why? In Capoeira you express yourself through your body, through music, through the instruments, and the whole thing happens in a circle where people are carefully directed to the Roda, to create an environment, to create a special moment.

Pedro Pontes:
I think you have overlooked the issue a bit, because Capoeira is the expression of the body, of the face, of the look, and of the voice. For that is this aspect of malandragem
(cunningness/trickery), the malandragem of Capoeira. Taking into consideration the good malandragem, of course

Eurico:
For sure.

Pedro Pontes:
As this was common both in Rio and in Salvador, Bahia. The bom malandro (the good rogue) no longer exists, as it was said by our beloved Chico Buarque (Singer/Composer).

Eurico:
There is only the ‘professional malandros’ (rogues) nowadays.

Pedro Pontes:
‘Malandros de carteirinha’ (Those who are rogues for a living)

Eurico:
“Malandro federal” (rogues in the Parliament) what is even worse!

Pedro Ponte:
But that ‘good malandro’ that existed, who used to ‘square a circle’ in order to survive, unfortunately is extinct, isn’t?!

Eurico:
It’s important to mention that this issue that you raised, is something that we fight not to happen. For this boa malandragem (good trickery), in fact all this social code about what it is to be a good malandro is present within Capoeira.

Pedro Pontes:
And the good malandro has character, ins’t right?!

Eurico:
Absolutely. Academically we could do a cultural, a sociological study, but I’ll talk about what happens in the day-to-day in the art. Capoeira has symbolisms, rituals that brings back to the excluded community, to the busy person in his/her daily life, the jogo de corpo (the embodied cognitive skills), the intuition, and more than that, the capacity for non-verbal communication, that you mention as inherent to the good malandragem, the look, the expression…

Pedro Pontes:
For those with the will to understand every little cue means a lot, doesn’t?! Para bom entendedor pingo é letra, né?

Eurico:
Exactly.

Pedro Pontes:
And even in a Roda, when you see your students, you know, sometimes a playful game, due to an unintentional blow, can sometimes cause anger in the other one, but one look can say: “Look, I didn’t mean to… lets keep up the game…”…

Eurico:
We have an expression that says: “Às vezes o caldo engrossa.” (sometimes things gets rougher).

Pedro Pontes:
Let it get a little rougher, but eventually when it gets dangerous we relieve it.

Eurico:
We have this concern that the environment must be a healthy one. But we can never forget that Capoeira is a fight. However, we have to pass this into our daily lives, what is the Capoeira fight in our daily lives? It’s about returning to people an instrument of leisure, joy, health… of social interaction…

[Part 2 ends here].