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Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art form that has earned international notoriety for its beauty and the skills required of its practitioners. Because Capoeira requires a combination of dance, acrobatics and fighting skill, those who play must go beyond developing physical strength to cultivate endurance, flexibility, and intuition. The music capoeiristas play and sing themselves provides the rhythm for games while players create a dialogue of movements. The appeal of the game and its philosophy is so widespread that it is now practiced around the world. Because Capoeira was practiced in secret for many years, its definitive origins remain elusive. Most researchers agree that Capoeira emerged among African slaves in Brazil in the 16 th and 17 th centuries as a means of fight training. Unlike slave masters in the northern hemisphere, masters in Brazil permitted slaves to sing and dance. Eventually, slave masters began to feel threatened by the slaves' games and the fight is believed to have been hidden in dance and instruments aided in this camouflage. The beauty its players created in the "roda" (or circle) allowed the game to survive. After slavery's abolition in 1888, Capoeira was outlawed until the 1930s because it had become a lethal martial art. Once these laws were repealed, the Brazilian government recognized Capoeira as Brazil's only truly national sport.
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"Batizado" is the Portuguese word for "baptism". As the term suggests, it is an initiation rite for new students and also serves as a promotion ceremony and celebration for more advanced students. Beginners play with Capoeira masters who playfully take them down. After this symbolic death, the student is reborn into the world of Capoeira, complete with a new nickname - a tradition that dates back to Capoeira's outlaw days. Advancing students receive a new cord representing their increased knowledge, insight and physical abilities within the art form.
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Maculele is a stick dance, also known as "jogo de bastoes" It is a remnant of a more elaborate and complex warrior dance attributed to the Cucumbis of Angola. Although, there are the ones who strongly believe maculele was born in Brazilian lands in the state of Bahia as an African cultural expression, it is very difficult to deny that this unique dance does not have its roots in Africa. The traditions of training for battle in the Cucumbis of Angola, recorded by Portuguese, included group dance formations simulating actual combat. Sticks about 12 inches in length symbolized weapons, but these were later replaced by the machetes of sugar cane workers during Brazil's colonial era. The contemporary form of maculele, features an attacker and an opponent executing a variety of attack and defense maneuvers. These include crossing sticks overhead, or in front of the body as blocking strategies. In recent years in the north east of Brazil, there has been an inclusion of maculele by local groups as part of public festivals. It is also a component of the annual winter Novena to Our Lady of Purification (patron saint of Santo Amaro) held each February in Bahia.
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