Читать книгу From Lee to Li: An A–Z guide of martial arts heroes - Ben Stevens - Страница 9

Born Manuel dos Reis Machado, Mestre referred to the fact that Machado was a ‘master’ of Capoeira, a martial art created by enslaved Africans in Brazil during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Bimba, meanwhile, was the slang for ‘penis’—apparently at his birth there was some confusion over Machado’s gender, until a midwife thought to take notice of the baby’s male part.

At its conception, Capoeira served a number of uses: it was a way for the slaves to stay healthy and to learn self-defence skills, while to those onlookers watching the ‘fights’ it acted as entertainment and a general way of raising the spirits.

I use quotation marks for the word fights as Capoeira’s fundamental purpose—that of teaching self-defence—was heavily disguised. Due to the techniques used it could look as much like a dance as a fight, and was anyway often accompanied by music, chanting, and singing. Thus anyone watching who might otherwise have been concerned by the fact that the slaves were learning to fight (for example, the slaves’ owner) would be lulled into thinking that the slaves were merely amusing themselves with a bit of singing and dancing. (Something that was doubtless deemed acceptable by a more ‘liberal’ slave-owner.)

Following the abolition of slavery in 1888, Capoeira ironically had to be practised in even greater secrecy as it was associated with the violent street gangs of Brazil. If caught, its practitioners were punished severely—some having the tendons of their feet cut by the police.

Finally, however, legal persecution of the martial art ceased and in 1932 Mestre Bimba (then aged thirty-two) was able to open the first Capoeira ‘school’. Members were obliged to wear a clean white uniform and conduct themselves well both inside and out of the training hall, and because of this professional people, such as doctors and lawyers, felt that they could now take up Capoeira. So, at last, Capoeira became acceptable to society as a whole.