VARIOUS MARTIAL ARTS RANGES

In Kali (A filipino Martial art), They usually break the basics ranges up into five ranges: Weapon range, Kicking range, Punching range, Trapping range and locking/grappling range. (locking is sometimes considered a different range from grappling and within the grappling arts they also have broken the ranges down even more). Most martial systems only specialise predominantly in two or three of these ranges. Capoeira for instance, could be argued to really only specialise in its kicking range, with only a few hand techniques, and throws that are either derived from Batuque or Judo/jiujitsu/greco-roman wrestling (non-african arts). However, there is a remote possibility that nubian wrestling played some kind of part in the development of capoeira.

THE MEANING OF NUBIAN

“Nubian” is a common term the Egyptians used to describe all brown- and black-skinned people living to the south.
According to oral tradition, the Nuba began wrestling in order to imitate monkeys. The Nuba wrestlers imitate certain animal and insect characteristics while wrestling.

Like a monkey, the Nuba will rub his hands on the ground; (to help his grip). (this is similar to moring/moringue of reunion which I will write about later). He also stamps his feet and shouts at his opponent. They flick their tongues like insects and dance within the ring, representing the spirit of their cattle herd or village.

Initiation

It is every Nubian boys dream to represent his village. From a young age, he competes with other village boys in his peer group. this is to prove intelligence, character and skill in order to be chosen to live in a cattle camp outside of town. While exceptional boys are taken to a camp at a young age, all the boys eventually go to the cattle camp by the time their thirteen. At the camp, the boys care for the herd. They are also trained daily in wrestling by the village champion. The village will provide food for them in order for them to become stronger. Whilst at the camp, they become almost a cultic fraternity. They spend time everyday to reflect and meditate. The wrestlers will take ash from burnt trees (which represents to them life’s essence) and they’ll dust their naked bodies with it, in order to give them power and cultic identity. (Similar to some of the womens traditions in the efundula). By wrestling, the young nubian men are initiated into manhood.

Wrestling Matches

Wrestling is more than just a sport to the Nubas—it is an important part of their culture. Each individual wrestles several randomly chosen matches at a tournament. Wrestlers are free to refuse to compete against someone if they wish. The athlete that is first to take his opponent to the ground will win the match. Some wrestlers wear gourds around their waist. An unbroken gourd will represent that a wrestler hasn’t lost a match. however, if they are taken down, it is both embarrassing to them and painful when the gourd breaks on their skin.

The overall winner recieves a twig, an animal hide or a fur tail. Every village has a famous wrestler who is experienced and consistently successful. Often the champion’s reputation spreads and girls compose songs about his success.

Wrestling tournaments are held between Nuba villages. The competition is conducted around sowing and harvest seasons. There are obvious fertility rites connected with the wrestling tournaments.

Religious Rites

The religious implications of Nuba wrestling are more complex, containing at least three interrelated ideas. First, wrestling is closely related to ancestral worship. Second, wrestling is closely connected with fertility rites. Finally, wrestling is the channel through which the participants dramatize their animistic beliefs. Wrestling has continued to unify an otherwise dislocated and isolated people.

This is a very interesting video that depicts some nuba culture. Here you can see some of the nubian wrestling. There is also some nubian dancing, which has movements very similar to some of the samba and axe dance steps.
Capoeiristas, in turn wear patuas ‘good luck charms’ that are meant to protect and give powers, much like the animal hide or fur tail that is wrapped around the legs of the nuba wrestler.

The nuba people also identify strongly with their wrestling style as a means to preserve their cultural heritage. I believe that it is not so much with the movements of nubian wrestling, but more so in the cultural similarities and belief systems, that capoeira can identify with and empathise with nuba wrestling. Even if it is on a very small level.

Information sources:

1. ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0302/feature3/index.html

2. wysinger.homestead.com/nubiansport.html

3. www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1988/JSH1502/jsh1502b.pdf

These are questions that have not really been fully answered, and may never be.

However, I have found it interesting to research the POSSIBILITIES of various influences that Capoeira may have been subjected to.

Capoeira, like many other martial arts, has been constantly changing, to keep within a cultural and practical relevance to society. Whilst some practicioners struggle to maintain important traditions, others are constantly testing and experimenting with Capoeira. I find it important to adhere to both causes, in the aim to give back something to the art that we recieve so much from.

Over the coming weeks, I wish to provide some basic information on some other arts that have had similar histories, movement base, or could have maybe even influenced capoeira in its earlier stages. This is to give you a door to explore capoeira in a much wider context.

N’golo or Engolo

This is probably the most widely discussed African artform with Capoeira circles.
It is said to have been performed at a festival called Efundula which was traditionally a huge gathering of the community. It was a passing of rites ritual, where the girls would undergo tests and preparations to be accepted as women ready for marriage and procreation.

THE EFUNDULA CEREMONY

The efundula ceremony varied between communities and over time. This is just a brief overview of some of the things that were involved.

Firstly the girls would enter into a closed house called ondjuo. A ritual leader called the namunganga would feed them and they would wait until they were summoned. After the sacred initiation they would finish by crawling through the legs of the namunganga and step over a cleft stick. These were tests performed to see if the women was pregnant. If they stumbled when stepping over the stick this would be a sign they were pregnant and would be outcast and rejected by their community. They would then be given some beer mixed with a herbal brew. This was a second test. If they vomited, the woman would have deemed to be pregnant.

The next stage of the initiations would be more ‘endurance’ type tests, that were often tasks like pounding millet in mortars for hours. This would also be a process of weeding out those that may have been pregnant. Previously this process could last for days.

The next stage was called the oihanangolo where the initiates (ovafuka) would become boy-like (ovamati). They would cover themselves in white ash, dress in skirts and go around demanding food from other households and sometimes even beat up men who crossed their paths. The community would have to comply and subdue. They were even allowed to insult the men, make them prepare the food for them and beat them up if the man was caught sleeping with a women, even if it was their own wife! This process could last from days to weeks.

(from an essay: Efundula and History: Female Initiation in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Northern Namibia by Patricia Hayes)

The final stage was a public event. The men would drum and the girls would dance and sing. The men would approach the women and propose for their hand in marriage. The marriages were usually prearranged.

(note: this is a wedding ceremony from an ovambo tribe, It was all I could find, so it may not at all be similar to the efundula).

NOTE: Within my brief research of Efundula, I did not encounter any mention of n’golo being a part of this particular ritual or ceremony. So I am unsure to whether Capoeira researchers have linked N’golo with Efundula through presumptions or historical evidence…

(from an essay: Efundula and History: Female Initiation in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Northern Namibia by Patricia Hayes)

N’golo Origins

The name N’golo, (which they say mean the dance of the zebras), I believe originally came from Barama N’golo and Nia N’golo. They were two brothers who led an animist group called bambara, which later became a very powerful community. Barama was a great hunter and warrior.

The brothers introduced into their community a social conduct structure, consisting of various rituals. Among them was for work to be carried out by association and based on age-sets. All boys would be initiated by being circumcised at the same time, mainly to establish hierachy. I believe that it was within these traditions and probably the passage of rites to manhood, that N’golo as an artform may have been developed/performed/named. There is no evidence to support this claim, so further research is welcomed.

However, the current research is based on a couple of key figures. An angolan artist by the name of Albano de Neves e Souza went to Brazil in the 1960’s. He had claimed to have seen the N’golo being performed in southern Angola and believed it was very similar to Capoeira.

N’golo, the Zebra Dance, is possibly the origin of the Capoeira, the fighting dance of Brazil. It is danced at the time of the ‘Mufico”, a puberty rite for the girls of the Mucope and Mulondo regions. The object of the dance is to hit your opponent’s face with your foot. A rhythm for the dance is beaten by clapping hands, and anyone who attempts a [b]low while outside the marked arena is disqualified. The ‘Angolan Capoeira’ in Brazil also has its special rhythm, which is one more reason to believe that it originates with the N’golo. N’golo means ‘zebra’, and to a certain extent the dance originates from the leaps and battles of the zebra: the blow with the feet while the hands are touching the ground is certainly reminiscent of the zebra’s kick.

(Neves e Souza, Da minha Africa do Brazil que eu vi, p.57)

It is interesting to note that in 1964 Mestre Pastinha wrote a book on Capoeira Angola but does not mention N’golo as being the main ancestor of Capoeira.

There is no doubt that capoeira came to Brazil with the African slaves. It was a form of fighting presenting its own characteristics, maintained up to our days… The name “Capoeira Angola” comes from the fact that it was the Angolan slaves in Bahia who mostly distinguished themselves in its practice.

(Mestre Pastinha, Capoeira Angola, p. 26-27)

If Mestre Pastinha had known about the theory of N’golo before the publication of his book I would have presumed that he would surely have mentioned it.

Whilst Neves e Souza was visiting Brazil, he made friends with a Brazilian folklorist named Camara Cascudo. They maintained contact and eventually Cascudo published some of his notes in 1967. It is believed that Mestre Pastinha either had contact with Neves e Souza or Cascudo and used their theory to link Capoeira with N’golo, or one of Pastinha’s students found the published letters and showed Mestre Pastinha.

In any case, the most likely theory is that the first link between Capoeira and N’golo came from Neves e Souza’s accounts alone.

The slaves of the Southern tribes who went there [to Brazil] through the trading post of Benguela took along their tradition to fight with the feet. With time, what was initially a tribal tradition was transformed into a weapon of attack and defence, which helped them to survive in a hostile environment. [This is the] reason for its continuity in the urban context. The worst bandits of Benguela are generally Muxilengues, which, in the cities, use the N’golo steps as a weapon. In Luanda, these steps, possibly brought from the South, are called Bassula. Even in the name there is something suggesting that the fight originated among the pastoral people of the South. Ba-ssula, those from the South.

(Camara Cascudo, Folklore, p. 186)

It is interesting to note that when Camara Cascudo went to Angola he was unable to find n’golo or bassula.

T.J. Desch-Obi is the only other person I have found that has seen and written accounts of the n’golo practice. He describes his experience as follows:

The music begins with clapping and a rhythmic humming that can take the place of a response in the call-and-response songs that someone will begin to sing. Soon after the mantra-like song and humming has fully formed, with a shout a practitioner will enter the circle dancing and often shouting again to accentuate the techniques he begins to demonstrate. When a contender joins the challenger in the circle the two will continue to dance to the music as they square off and one adept will launch a kick or sweep at the other. This attack will be defended by dodging or ‘blending’ in such a way that will then allow the defender to launch a smooth counter-attack. The two will continue in a cycle of attacks, defenses, and counter-attacks in a smooth continuous flow.

(T.J. Desch Obi, ‘Engolo’ p.56)

Because of these accounts by T.J. Desch Obi and Neves e Souza, and the presumed links between Capoeira and N’golo, Capoeira today uses these accounts to concrete Capoeira’s African ancestry. Many Capoeira Angola groups will use N’golo as a certain proof that Capoeira was created in Africa and refined in Brazil. However, to me this may be, unfortunately, an over-simplification.

Conclusion

I believe that Capoeira was influenced by many different African martial arts, rituals and tribes. I also believe that Capoeira was formed in brazil by many ethnic groups that influenced society at the time and who were also influenced by society and its situation. There existed a huge number of African tribes over the centuries, each with their own traditions, languages, rituals and beliefs. They all developed different ceremonies that sometimes lasted and were passed down through the years, faded away, or over time, moulded into completely new traditions. There is still a huge amount of research to be done and I believe the search for answers and links, although seemingly sparse, is not yet over.

There are, in reality, only a certain amount of ways the human body can move. We are only born with two arms and two legs. If we were born with maybe three arms, movement possibilities could maybe be different but we weren’t. When there is similarities in social oppression, similarities in environment and culture, I believe there is also similarities within fighting systems. But we will touch upon this in the upcoming articles.

References:

1.Nestor Capoeira, Capoeira: Roots of the dance-fight-game
2.Mattias Rohrig assuncao, Capoeira, the history of an afro-brazilian martial art
3.Patricia Hayes, Efundula and History: Female Initiation in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Northern Namibia

http://www.gwsafrica.org/knowledge/patricia/efprint.htm

4.Mestre Pastinha, Capoeira Angola
5.T.J Desch Obi, Engolo
6.Neves e Souza, Da minha Africa e do brasil que eu vi
7.L. da Camara Cascudo, Folklore do Brasil
8.Waldeloir Rego, Capoeira Angola
9. Ousmane Sako, The Heart of the Ngoni By Harold Courlander
10. T.J. Desch Obi, Fighting for honor