Capoeira Angola
The older and slower branch of Brazilian capoeira. It is played low to the ground and the berimbau sets the tempo; Mestre Pastinha organised it as a school.
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Catalogs & Databases for Capoeira Angola
About Capoeira Angola
Capoeira Angola is the older and slower of the two main branches of Brazilian capoeira. The name only settled in the twentieth century, and it did so as a counterpart to capoeira regional, which Mestre Bimba opened in Salvador in 1932. Angola was organised as a school by Vicente Ferreira Pastinha, known as Mestre Pastinha, who in 1941 took over the Centro Esportivo de Capoeira Angola and gave the older practice a firm shape, rules and written principles. The game is played low and close to the ground. The basic ginga movement is slower and wider, movements along the floor are frequent, as are turns beneath the opponent's leg and seemingly awkward positions from which the answer arrives. Speed is not the aim; the aim is deception, exact distance and the ability to answer at the moment the opponent expects something else. Capoeira has its own word for that quality, malícia. The music is not accompaniment but a controlling element. The orchestra, called the bateria, has three berimbaus in the roles of gunga, médio and viola, together with the pandeiro, atabaque, agogô and reco-reco. The tempo set by the berimbau determines how the game will be played; the players wait at the foot of the instrument and may enter the circle only on a signal. Ritual elements belong to the game as well, for instance the chamada, an interruption in which one player calls the other and both pass into a short shared movement. Angola is still practised chiefly in Bahia and in the lineages that trace themselves to Pastinha.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.