I just finish reading Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together. The book is about the revolution caused by social media in our daily group dynamics. The changes in communication patterns, services provision, collaboration, etc. is already happening. Much of his work enlightens current matters in our worldwide Capoeira community too. (more…)
Often after interviews and talks many of you guys came up with very nice thoughts and/or comments about the questions and/or different issues. I would appreciate if you could share them through this post. Though we won’t be able to use this in the documentary movie, I would still be able to use them in my research, or in future projects, after contacting you in this regard. (more…)
Picture sent by Mariola
Please, send me your best selection of pictures on 4capoeirathoughts_@_gmail_dot_com and I’ll add them to this post. I’ll also see if we can find someone to manage a Flicker account so that we can have all the pictures available.
Music is one of the main paths towards a better understanding of the cultural context from which Capoeira sprung from. It was a pleasure to see people sharing songs, their meanings, contexts and translations. Some were taking note of rhythm patterns and songs like real ethnographers. I’m sure some of you guys will play an important role in upholding the true values of Capoeira for the next generations.
The Jogo Aberto documentary movie aims to bridge practitioners from different backgrounds in their quest to learn Capoeira and master its potentialities as a tool towards education, community development, and social inclusion. After the first edition the bulk of the material will be subtitled and posted in the 4CapoeiraThoughts youtube channel as an open resource for the Capoeira community. In order to accomplish the project more quickly and embrace a wider range of languages subtitles we adopted an ‘open-source’ approach. If you would like to participate in the project, at this stage we are looking for people to help with transcriptions and translations. So far the project is dealing with English and Portuguese transcriptions, after this first moment we will be able to translate into other languages.
Camaradas, The production of the Jogo Aberto documentary movie will be carried on as an ‘open-source’ endeavour. So, if you can help with transcriptions and/or translations making the project available on your native language, please read this post and get in contact with me. Thanks for all of you who came and made this project possible, to all the students who trusted in our proposal and understood the importance of their role within the art.
This is the last post in which I will be discussing my thoughts on Fundamentalism and Capoeira based on an experience I had trying to cooperate with another group/style to collect data for my research.
Matters of authenticity are very often related to aesthetic values, socio-centrism, and market reserve. The concept is usually applied attempting to validate or to quantify one’s perspective or practice over somebody else’s. It is also frequently based upon myths of purism; an ironic approach for an interdisciplinary and intercutural practice like Capoeira.
Fundamentalism is a worldwide phenomenon today and it affects the practice of both styles of Capoeira. The following posts were written based on an experience I had both as practitioner and as a researcher trying to work with inter-style and inter-group cooperation in a event a while ago.
Mestre Jogo de Dentro singing a Ladainha at his workshop at the Volta Por Cima / Cordão de Ouro Centre in Brasília in 08-2005
Since the 1960s the Day of the Black Consciousness in Brazil is celebrated on the 20th of November. At this day, in 1695, the last leader of the Quilombo dos Palmares – Zumbi, was executed by the slavish establishment.
Photo taken at a 'Domingueira'. Project Learning from Brazilian Culture
After writing about the Volta Por Cima and the Brazil Sweden Cultural Exchange projects I received a few e-mails from people interested in this sort of social initiative in Capoeira. These new contacts made me think about the 4 Capoeira Thoughts proposal.
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The Social Role of Capoeira:
An Invitation to make local sense of a cultural practice in global spreading
If we are to contribute with and bring awareness to the role of Capoeira as an educative and social inclusive practice worldwide, we need to discuss the difficulties, particularities, and outcomes of these actions in local communities. Capoeira was born from attitudes of resistance against oppression and since then has been empowering the underprivileged people. (more…)
Mestre Acordeon, Mestre Cobrinha Mansa e Contra-Mestre Eurico (Sweden 06/2009)
Capoeira and Global Trends
There are some achievements of humanity that I would say have reached a point of no return. Globalization and diversity are two of them. Capoeira, as a driving force for an ever increasing number of multinational practitioners, deeply reflect both phenomenon’s encompassing their potentialities and pitfalls. This post embraces, amongst other things, the inversions caused by the neo-liberalist globalization in our institutions, altering the meaning and social role of our Capoeira groups. (more…)
