History of Capoeira

Soon after their arrival in Brazil, the Portuguese conquerors needed a huge amount of labors because of their purposes of enrichment. In order to realize them, they deported in South America nearly four millions of African slaves.
This people could only carry their culture with them: their religion, their music, their vision of the world and so on. In such a folklore were contained several tribal dances which Africans used to perform during particulars happening to measure men’s strength; those dances were performed using the head and low kicks to produce disequilibrium in the adversary.
In Brazil, such dances began to be used with other purposes: the slaves used head, legs and arms to smash down their jailers and get free. Hence, in Brazil, those African folklore dances became in all meanings a fight, a fight called CAPOEIRA. Since it comes from dance, it’s tight joined with music. In addiction, the Portuguese began to punish those who played such fight – to avoid punishment the slavers masked the fight in the shape of a dance.
During the years this fight/dance was enriched by acrobatics and the dance turned into a game in which players show their skill, ability, strength, flexibility and cleverness. The main step in this direction was moved by Mestre (master) Bimba in the early XX century. He mixed classical capoeira with movements taken from karate, ju-jitsu and boxe and created the so called ‘luta regional bahiana’ or ‘capoeira Regional’. Many schools (called ‘grupos’ i.e. groups) of capoeira Regional exist today, any of them referring to a determinate Mestre.