Balancing the Berimbau- Embodied Ethnographic Understanding

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DOI: 10.1177/1077800405284370 2006; 12; 316 Qualitative Inquiry

Neil Stephens and Sara Delamont : Embodied Ethnographic UnderstandingBerimbauBalancing the

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10.1177/1077800405284370Qualitative InquiryStephens, Delamont / Balancing the Berimbau

Balancing the BerimbauEmbodied EthnographicUnderstanding

Neil StephensSara DelamontCardiff University, Wales

This article is an unusual reflexive text. It has two authors, two voices, twoembodied experiences, and two sociological biographies in dialogue. Theempirical focus is capoeira, but the ethnographic experience is common tomany cultural forms. Capoeira is the Brazilian dance and martial art, done tothe music of the berimbau. Classes are offered in many European countries, aswell as in North America. Two sociologists, one a practitioner, the other a sed-entary observer, collaborate to study what attracts students outside Brazil tocapoeira, how it is taught to non-Brazilians, and how the classes and socialevents are enacted and understood. The dualities of the collaborative andcontrastive engagements are explored in this article, which focuses on how todo fieldwork on an embodied skill. Physical activity, musical apprenticeship,and a multilingual environment are all made problematic in their collaborativereflections.

Keywords: capoeira; embodiment; dialogic text; dialogic fieldwork;autobiography

316

Qualitative InquiryVolume 12 Number 2April 2006 316-339

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Authors Note: We, Trovao and Bruxa, are grateful to all the instructors we have trained underand observed, especially Claudio Campos (Achilles), Perseus, Andromeda, Tireseus, Ajax,Patrokles, Ulysses, and Cadmus. We have enjoyed the company of all the disciples in all theclasses and displays that we have attended. All the names in the article, except ours andClaudios, are pseudonyms: The teachers are Greek heroes, and the students have nicknamesfrom Kiplings Jungle Book because no capoeira student we have ever met had a nickname fromthat source. If there is a real Mowgli or Baloo practicing capoeira, we apologize. RosemaryBartle Jones word processed the article, for which we are very grateful. We owe a debt to RodrigoRibeiro, who has occasionally plunged into capoeira classes and rodas in Britain so that he couldgive us his insights both as a Brazilian capoeirista and as a social scientist. We have receivedencouragement and intellectual support from Andre L. T. Reis, Gary Alan Fine, John Evans, Jon-athan Skinner, Suzel Reily, Ben Fincham, Andrew Parker, Susie Scott, and Ieuan Rees: Theyhave provided the academic equivalent of a great pandeiro (tambourine) playing for us. PaulAtkinson read the manuscript in draft several times as it grew and developed, for which we arevery grateful.


Waiting for AchillesTrovao (Thunder) and Bruxa (the Witch) are standing in a kickboxing

gym in Tolnbridge, a British city.1 They, and 18 other people, are waiting forAchilles, their instructor, to arrive. Music from a CD fills the small gym. Themajority of those present, including Trovao, are barefoot, dressed in whitetrousers, and have blue cords knotted round their waists and T-shirts with pic-tures or slogans or logos about capoeira emblazoned on them. Many, thoughnot Trovao, wear T-shirts with Achilless name on them. They stretch, standon their heads or their hands, do cartwheels or in pairs, practice high kicks.Trovao has warmed up and is talking to Bruxa, who is in jeans and a sweat-shirt and is holding a notebook and pen:

Bruxa (B): Did you train on Saturday?Trovao (T): No, SandyIkkiwas moving house. Did you go to watch Perseus?B: Yes, usual crowd getting ready for the carnival displayinteresting. We ought

to write a paper or two on all thisembodiment, two-handed ethnography. . . .T: Not till Ive been to the SSSS conference in San Diego.B: Of course not. Ill start and then you canoh goodheres Achilles.

A fit young Brazilian, tanned, beaming, and dressed in jeans and a fleecewheels a bicycle into the gym. Bruxa turns and kisses himhe says HeyBruxa! Hey Trovao! and slaps Trovaos hand.2 Achilles then pulls off hisshoes and runs to the changing room. As he races up the gym, the womenhe passes kiss him, the men slap hands or do high fives. The atmo-sphere changes. The individuals and pairs turn into a class: They stop whatthey are doing, take drinks of water, and form up into two lines down the gym.One man puts down a strange-looking wooden bow with a hollow gourd tiedto it and joins the two lines. Achilles bursts out of the changing room, now inwhite trousers and T-shirt, with purple and yellow cords at his waist, shoutsCome on, guys. Lets train, and begins an energetic warm-up routine.Bruxa and Trovao have separated. Trovao is in the front row, bent double withhis hands on the floor. Bruxa is standing where she can see Achilles, with hernotebook open, scribbling furiously.

In this way, in a small gym in a working-class neighborhood in a univer-sity city, this article was conceived.

Learning to Balance the BerimbauThis article reflects on a project to study capoeira conducted by partici-

pant and nonparticipant observation and explores what Coffey (1999) calledthe ethnographic self. The berimbau is a stringed instrument, consisting of a

Stephens, Delamont / Balancing the Berimbau 317


wooden bow, strung with wire and with a polished gourd attached, that pro-duces an eerie sound. The player has to balance it on one fingerit is bothheavy and an unwieldy 5 feet highwhile playing it with a small thin stickand shaking a rattle. Trovao plays the berimbau, and the title of this articlecomes from his comment that the first skill he had to acquire was balancingthe berimbau.

There are two authors, two capoeira enthusiasts, whose dialogue is theheart of this article. Because capoeira was illegal in Brazil for 200 years, hadits origins in the African-Brazilian culture of the slaves, and was then associ-ated with a semicriminal urban underclass, adherents are known by nick-names or war names bestowed by their teacher. Many students know thecapoeira names of their coevals but not their real names. Trovaos use ofSandy-Ikki in the opening vignette, giving both the mans real name,Sandy, and his capoeira name, Ikki, to ensure Bruxa recognizes a specificperson is typical. When Bruxa was in Longhampston one Saturday, two ofAchilless Cloisterham students visiting Perseuss class introduced them-selves to her: HiIm Hamish-Toomai and Im Bagheera-Ilya. We sawyou at the Batizado in Cloisterham, didnt we? Here one man gave his realname then his capoeira name, the other did the reverse.

This article is a dialogue between a player, Neil Stephens, who has areal capoeira nickname but is present here under the pseudonym Trovao(Thunder); and an observer, Sara Delamont, who does not play, so does nothave a real nickname but has adopted the nickname Bruxa (the Witch) forthis article. Both nicknames are Brazilian Portuguese, the core language ofcapoeira. Stephens is better known in capoeira by his real capoeira nick-name, so we have used a capoeira pseudonym to simulate the original pur-pose of such names. Bruxa has an honorary capoeira nickname too, and thathas also been replaced by a pseudonymous one for symmetry. The capoeirateacher who has instructed Trovao regularly and been observed most fre-quently by Bruxa is referred to by the pseudonym Achilles, to convey hisheroic character in this narrative. We have used pseudonyms for all thecapoeira teachers, but Achilles chooses to be named, as do the teachers inLewiss (1992) monograph. He is Claudio Campos, of the Beribazu Schoolof Capoeira, and has been a capoeirista for 15 years.

This article locates itself in reflexive ethnographic writing, explores theskills of the two researchers, contrasts their roles, presents some of the find-ings and insights from the shared project, and makes the dangers of their col-laboration explicit. The central argument is that when the focus of a researchproject is an embodied activity, two researchers, operating in different ways,can make explicit what is, more usually, an individual researchers inner dia-

318 Qualitative Inquiry


logue between experience and knowledge, between participation anddetachment, between embodied participation and reflexive contemplation.

Two-handed ethnographic projects are not unusual. They have a long his-tory in social anthropology, from Bateson and Mead (1942), through Corbinand Corbin (1987) and the Colliers (Collier, 1997) in Spain, Wax and Wax(1971) among First Americans, or Spindler and Spindler (1988) in Germany.In anthropology, the two-person team has frequently been that of husbandand wife. A sociological example is Adler and Adler (1999). There are alsocollaborations at the boundaries of the seventh moment, such as Ellis andBochner (1996) or Richardson and Lockridge (1991, 1994, 1998), with afocus on understanding and text production. These latter pairs have beenmuch more explicit in their publications about the interplay(s) between theirrelationships and the social field.

We see our collaboration as different. We are not a couple in any sense ofthat word. We have been teacher (Delamont) and student (Stephens), and weare now colleagues in academic life. In capoeira, the old teacher-student linkis reversed: In capoeira, Trovao is the teacher. The ethnographic partnershipis an inversion of the former teacher-student relationship. Where Bruxa wasonce Trovaos teacher, he as the skilled capoeirista is now her instructor. Heis the participant with his body in real time, as the intellectual interpreter rec-ollecting in tranquility. Bruxa is the student, with an observers intellect inreal time and a body that is only an impediment. Gender is not relevantage,physical skill, and musical talent are.

The research processes themselves, the settings in which the data are col-lected and contested, the fieldwork roles, the embodiment, the experientialunderstanding, and the intellectual exploration are all mirrored in thedialogic interplay of Trovao and Bruxa and are vividly present in the article,where two textual styles of representation confront one another and thereader. These shifting dualities also represent for the reader unfamiliar withcapoeira the Janus-faced activity itself, in which trickery, deception, quick-wittedness, humor, playfulness, and sleight of hand are valorized as much asphysical skill (Lewis, 1992).

In the settings where capoeira is taught and performedgyms, dojos,dance studios, youth clubs, pubs, clubs, the streetTrovao is a full partici-pant, embodying the movements, the rhythms, the singing, the clapping, andthe ax (energy), whereas Bruxa watches, embodying nothing. She writes: acerebral activity. These settings are noisy, full of movement; they are sweaty,crowded, and actually or potentially public. Events happen at a fast pace,there are no sustained conversations; the speech channels are essentially uni-directional as the teacher instructs and the disciples obey. What talk occurs is



fragmentary and focused on the immediate, the physical, and the rhythmic.Dont look at the floor! Meia lua! Watch out for the guy! Negativa!Ikki, concentrate! Clap louder! OK, guys, relax, and so on. Teachersand students hug and kiss each other at the start and finish of each class aspart of the Brazilian ambience. The language is a mlange of English, Bra-zilian Portuguese, Portuguese Portuguese, and anything else that will im-prove communication.

When Trovao and Bruxa reflect on the reconciliations of their data collec-tion, they do so in an academic, quiet, private setting. Both sit at a table, nomusic plays, neither moves, both talk in a sustained and considered way, withpauses for thought. No one plays a berimbau, no one sings, no one claps,there is no ax. Trovao articulates his tacit, embodied, experiential knowl-edge, transferring it into the verbal, analytic sphere. Bruxa takes her written,outsider knowledge and offers it to Trovao to form a contrastive narrative.The talk is two-dimensional, with Trovao instructing Bruxa and vice versa, ina context where there is no instructor and no audience. Neither sweats,there is plenty of space, and if either were to fall over academically, no oneelse will see their defeat. Bruxa does not demonstrate her intellectual skill byknocking Trovao over symbolically or vice versa, the way Achilles demon-strates his capoeira superiority in class (see the Falling Over section below).The language is academic English with a few capoeira terms in Portuguese.There is no physical contact: It is definitely not a Brazilian environment.

These contrasts of fieldwork setting and dialogic setting are reflected inthe text of this article in a paradoxical way. The accumulated, dual under-standings of capoeira classes and their culture, distilled from the noisy andchaotic setting, are presented in a traditional academic text where the twoauthorial voices have been crafted into one shared, dispassionate, scholarlyone. These passages are written to enable a reader who has never seencapoeira, but is an experienced consumer of traditional ethnographic textsabout previously unknown worlds, to appreciate what happens throughoutEurope and the United States where capoeira is taught and learned. Parallelswould be Fines (1983, 1987, 1996, 1998) evocations of fantasy gaming, Lit-tle League, restaurants, and mushroom hunting or Vails (1999, 2001) of tat-too collecting. For representational contrast, the private cerebral work ofthe two ethnographers is presented in a more messy textual format, as dia-logue and interrogation, as thrust and parry. This is a much more accuraterepresentation of capoeira itself, where all the rehearsal, drill, and practiceare only a prelude to the real thing, the game, fight, play, dance in theroda. In the contest in the roda, the two opponents ask each other questions,probe and resist, attack and defend, feint and deceive. The cut and thrust of a



game is often described to novices with a question-and-answer metaphor,and it is this that occurs in the academic setting. Paradoxically, therefore, theshared understanding of capoeira achieved across a table in a quiet office isrhetorically more like capoeira than the way it is represented in the con-ventional academic text. If Trovao is more tested in the intellectual gamethan in the physical class, so too the reader is more stretched by the messier,dual-voiced, dialogic text. This article contrasts the tacit knowledge ofembodiment and the explicit knowledge of the talk to reflect on the opportu-nities and possibilities for doing good fieldwork on a very physical activity,where words are relatively unimportant and movement is everything, or al-most everything.

The general issuesabout the relative importance of body and of mind inethnography, about the levels of physical and mental competence needed tostudy an energetic physical activity, and about the successful teaching ofdance and martial artsare wider than the research on studying capoeira asit is taught, learned, and enjoyed outside Brazil. Stollers (2004) discussionof sensuous ethnography comes to mind. There are academic studies ofcapoeira in Brazil (Browning, 1995; Downey, 2005; Lewis, 1992) and ofteaching it in Warsaw (Reis, 2003), but all were written by single-handedpractitioner ethnographers. Our contention is that a two-handed ethnogra-phy, combining participation and nonparticipation, with continuous reflex-ive dialogue, generates different insights not only about capoeira but alsorelevant to any embodied activity. Good fieldwork depends on tough-minded, critical reflexivity (Davies et al., 2004; Hammersley & Atkinson,1995). The past 25 years have seen a rapid growth in reflexive writings, inwhich people explore problems that arose during their fieldwork and tell sto-ries about how they overcame them, or failed to do so (De Marrais, 1998;Jokinen, 2004). These retrospective tales about fieldwork vary widely intheir tough-mindedness, their self-criticism, and their reflexivity. Some arefrankly self-indulgent, others descriptive, many are very carefully crafted toenhance the status of their authors (Atkinson, 1996). Most of the publishedreflexive texts are single authored, even when they address research con-ducted by teams. Perhaps the best-known example is Geers (1964) recollec-tions about Becker, Geer, and Hughes (1968). The dual dialogic perspectivecould usefully be extended to, for example, dance ethnography (Buckland,1999a, 1999b; Gore, 1999; Picart & Gergen, 2004; Williams, 1999) or theethnography of sport (McPhail, 2004; Sassatelli, 1999) or, more specific, themartial arts (Jones, 2002). There are also links to the work of De Nora (2000)on music in a variety of everyday life contexts.



Thunder and the Witch: Skills and UnderstandingIn this section, the authors are briefly introduced with their qualifications

to participate in and understand capoeira. The possible characteristics andqualifications are physical ability, language, race and ethnicity, nationality,knowledge of African-Brazilian culture, Web skills, social science skills,musical talent, and gender.

Trovao was a successful, skilled practitioner of another martial art fromthe age of 9 to 21. He has been learning capoeira for 2 years and has achievedthe second level of competence, the corda azul-marron (blue and brownbelt). Bruxa has no physical skills at all. Both are White, British Anglo-Sax-ons, neither speaks Brazilian-Portuguese. Trovao is male, Bruxa female. InBrazil, in the United States, and in Europe, women are welcomed in classes,and so there is nothing in Bruxas sex that prevents her involvement. How-ever, in the classes observed, there are usually more men than women, andthe majority of the teachers are male. Trovaos karate background, and itsutility in learning capoeira and developing an explanatory framework to the-orize that learning, is explored further below.

Capoeira is practiced and performed to music. Training is done to CDs,performance is accompanied by live music. All students are expected to singand to clap in appropriate rhythms. Serious students learn to play the drums,tambourines, cowbells, and most important, the berimbau itself. Bruxa canneither sing in tune nor hold a clapped rhythm and has never learned to playany instrument. Trovao can sing, clap in the correct rhythm, and play thecowbells and the berimbau. He has musical talent, and this is coupled with anexperiential grasp of music based on 9 years playing the guitar, 6 years pro-ducing electronic music, a summers worth of singing lessons in his lateteens, and 2 years playing capoeira.

Most of the information about capoeira available outside Brazil, bothintellectual and practical, is Web based.3 Histories of capoeira, for example,are easily found on Web sites. So too are clothing and other items for sale andmost vital, information on the classes that are available in each city. Trovaohas good Web skills and can routinely find both intellectual and practicalmaterial using information and communication technology. Bruxa isrepelled by the Web, responding like a vampire to garlic or daylight.

Both Trovao and Bruxa are well-qualified social scientists who have beenprimarily concerned with the cerebral and the verbal and the intellectual. Intheir main professional research, Trovao has worked on the sociology ofknowledge, Bruxa on sociology of education. Neither has previously investi-gated a primarily physical, musical, bodily activity valued for its physicality,musicality, and bodily pleasures.



Trovao and Bruxa know about capoeira classes in Britain in differentways. Trovao trains twice a week, each time for 1.5 to 2 hours in a class, andpractices at home for from 6 to 8 hours on top of time in the class in the sum-mer, much less in winter or when injured. This is supplemented by streetrodas, informal rodas in parks, and sometimes demonstrations in pubs orclubs. Bruxa observes a capoeira class at least twice a week for 1.5 to 2hours, taking ethnographic field notes in situ and writing them up afterward.

Trovao has a physical understanding of capoeira, based both on learningwhat the author Nestor Capoeira (1995, 2002) called the dancefightgame himself and on 13 years of karate to a high level. This provides Trovaowith a disciplined, educated body (Frank, 1990, 1991). Bruxa has a cerebral,academic understanding based on reading about capoeira and other relevantfeatures of Brazilian life such as race, Candomble, samba, and slavery, aswell as the ethnographic research itself. Reading on capoeira covers aca-demic anthropology (Downey, 2005; Lewis, 1992; Reis, 2003), other aca-demic texts (Browning, 1995; Schreiner, 1993), and the books thatcapoeiristas read (Almeida, 1986; Capoeira, 1995, 2002; Twigger, 1999).The two sets of skills and experiences enable a shared ethnography to beconducted.

Dialogic Play

We, Bruxa and Trovao, are in a university office seated companionably ata table in a book-lined room. It is silent apart from our talkno music, notraffic noise, no berimbau being strummed. Together we reflect on howimportant that embodied experience is, both to Trovaos ability in capoeiraand to his research input:

B: Can you bear it if I read a bit of my fieldnotesthe written-up versionwhereIm puzzled, but Im certain you know what was going on?

T: For sure.B: There are four things that happened in a regular class with Achilles that I dont

think I understand at all. One evening in the late spring, Ive written:

They have been learning moves, and practicing them for about 45 minutes.Achilles chooses Trovao to demonstrate an exercise: a stretching exercise Ithink, not an actual capoeira move. Achilles stands. Trovao lies on his backwith his head at Achilless feet, and his hands holding Achilless ankles. ThenTrovao goes up into an arched, bridge position with Achilles leaning over tosupport him. Once Trovao is balanced in the bridge position, he raises one legup into the air and stretches it out at a 75 degree angle. Then he puts that leg



back down and raises the other. Trovao can do this: but when they go into pairsto practice the exercise, few of the other students can do it.

T: Well, Achilles has never explained why we do that, so Ive only got mythoughts.

B: Does it help having the other person there? Does it help to hold their ankles?T: I must admit I dont find it helps but I can do a bridge you see.B: But lots of people cant, can they? About two thirds of the regular class cant

easily do a bridge properly?T: Depends what you call regular class: the people with the cordas can, I think.

But you get a lot of people who cant do it. That and the handstand arethefirst kind of hurdles to learning capoeira. Theyre discriminating things, thatpeople can and cant do.

Trovao then explains in detail, at length, the understanding he has as aplayer.

The purpose of the stretching exercise. If a person does a bridge alone,their hands can slide: Holding someone elses ankles prevents that. Gettingup into bridge is hard, the standing supporter helps the person in the bridge toget up and hold the position. The exercise strengthens the muscles needed toget into and hold the bridge. Lifting one leg strengthens the muscles in theother and helps the player practice how, in the capoeira game, they will rollout of the bridge into another position. Bruxa could not deduce any of thesethings from Achilless demonstration. Typically, Achilles did not explicitlyexplain or justify the exercise: He demonstrated it, required the students to doit if they could, and then moved on.

Trovao has escaped from Bruxas first challenge. Bruxa moves on.

B: At the end of that class Achilles had a samba roda. I wrote,

Achilles drums a samba rhythm, and they all form a circle and dance on thespot. Trovao takes a girl into the roda, and some other men go into the circlealone. Achilles stops playing and says: When we have dancing, you have todance with a girl. A guy cant dance with a guy. He then demonstrates some-thing, which is hard for me to see: but I think it is how a man steals a girl fromher current dancing partner.

Trovao explains: The reprimand during the samba incident was under-stood by Trovao, not merely experienced by him. In a samba roda, only onemixed couple dances in the ring. This is different from a dance teachers dem-onstration, where everyone practices moves in lines, or from dancing at aparty or in a club, where everyone can dance at once. If another man wanted



to dance in the roda, he did need to cut in on Trovao, and Achilles was,indeed, teaching a couple of strategies that can be used to do that. He thenamplifies, by contrasting Achilless self-confident use of these techniqueswith that of the students:

T: Achilles always does it the same way. He walks in, he has this big smile, andholds his shoulders in this sultry, masculine, dancey way. In Tolnbridge, whichis not Brazil where I guess theyd be closer, the guy and the girl are dancingabout a foot away from each other, and Achilles can fit in the gap: Or he willcome up behind the bloke and remove him out of the way.

B: Can you do that?T: When its become the normal activity to me, I think maybe Ill have been there

too long.

Much earlier in that lesson, Achilles gave a small demonstration ofcapoeira rhythms and how to clap them. Before the samba roda, Achillesgave the class a lecture on the importance of his authority: Students must notorganize events or performances; he is their teacher, he is Brazilian, he is theknowledgeable person, his reputation could be damaged by unauthorizedperformances and displays. As Trovao and Bruxa reflect on these incidents,the embodied experience is rendered explicit through the dialogic discourse.By talking, by sharing two perspectives on the events and their embodied,dialogic, and social meanings, the ethnographic account is strengthened anddeepened.

Trovao understood the need for the clapping lesson, teaching the classes toclap in the correct rhythms, following the berimbau, better than Bruxa did.He explains,

Id say the importance of clapping is firstly the combined role of inclusion andmusic in creating ax. If everyone claps everyone is involved in the roda andthe music is louder. Secondly, I can see how the clapping rhythm correlates tohow youre meant to ginga [the basic foot movement] in time with the music. Inits strictest sense I think the back leg should go back to complete the secondposition of capoeira on the third clap beat. In fact, the leading rhythmical ele-ment is the dong of the berimbau, and both the clap and the back foot are ledby that. Perhaps this is more noticeable not by watching the third beat butinstead the fourth missed beat of the clapping, as this should be the moment theplayer doesnt make an explicit step and is instead shifting their momentumfrom swinging their leg back and bringing it forward again.

Trovao understands the lecture on discipline and the instructors honorand reputation as a discipulo (disciple, student): He is subject to that disci-



pline, and when there are performances, his abilities reflect well or badly onAchilless teaching. Trovao reflects that

theres a kind of a reputation thing going on but were not that good. Com-pared to people that normally demonstrate capoeira, were probably prettyrubbish. II dont think Achilles wants an audience to go around watchingpeople not being very good at stuff and itit representing him. Achilles neversaid this but Raksha told me that when we did this show in The Maldives [aworld music caf bar] when Achilles was away some time ago, Achilleswouldnt be happy if that was knownso its never been mentioned to him.Raksha and Phao didnt realize at the time. Butbut Raksha told us we werentallowed to wear our club uniform abadas [trousers]. Or anything that said theclub on it. So that people wouldnt know

B: Which club you were in, yeah.T: Yeah. Yeah. Achilles had said if we perform, we will represent him and we will

represent the lineage. If we go out and start doing stuff in the streets so hewanted it to be good and proper. And its never going to be that good and properif we do itI was thinking youve got to be good at karate to do a public showand there, people whove been doing it a year, that would be red belts, the ideaof red belts doing a public demonstration, it would be outrageous. How couldthey possibly be good? They have only been doing it that short amount of thetime? Well, obviously the two are related. Achilles wants to okay things toensure that theyretheyre going to uphold his reputation and the reputationof the group.

Here Trovao unpicks the complex reputational issues that lie behindAchilless outburst in the light of his karate experience, the history of theTolnbridge class, and the complex awareness contexts in that class. Bruxahad never been told about the secret performance at The Maldives. Hereagain, Trovaos experiences, especially his student role, subject to the disci-pline, is different from Bruxas. Bruxas behavior does not effect Achillessreputation in the same way because he is not training her in the physical skillsof capoeira.4

These are four episodes from a typical class in Tolnbridge. Similar ana-lytic insight through dialogue came from exploring one incident from a classled by Perseus:

B: Can we go on to something that happened that night Diomedes was in town?Can I read what Ive written, because I have no idea what was going on?

T: For sure.B: Theres a bit of introduction for our papers readers, OK?



Unusually Perseus is teaching in Tolnbridge, with Ulysses and Diomedes, whois visiting from Antwerp. All three are Brazilians living in Europe. We are in auniversity sports hall. There are ten male students including Trovao and fourwomen. The group do a ninety minute class with Ulysses, and then a furtherninety minute lesson with Diomedes.

T: I remember thatwe were all exhausted.B: OKnow the bit I dont get.

Perseus is clearly unhappy with the sound quality of the berimbau Lunghri hasbrought. He asked Lunghri about the wire, which he felt was too slack. Was itfrom a car tyre? Lunghri said yesPerseus asked what kind of car? Lunghri,obviously fazed, said he had no idea: he and Raksha had strung it together.Raksha came over, Perseus repeated the question: Raksha said he had no ideawhat car the tyre had come from. Perseus told Lunghri that the gourd (thecabasa) was too big.

T: I dont remember that, but Lunghri has talked about it since.B: What was going on?T: I dont knowneither does Lunghri or Rakshawe never found out what

Perseus didnt like.B: Speculate for me anyway. What effect does the wire have on the sound?T: I am not sure I have much to say on the quality of the sounds. Regarding the

slackness of the string, if its too slack it would (a) perhaps mean the berimbauisnt curved and, thus, able to hold the cabasa on tightly enough or get yourhand between the string and the verde [the wood]; (b) My sense is it would betrickier to distinguish as a player of the berimbau between the note played withthe stone pushed firmly against the string and the one where its held closelyenough to vibrate against the stone when its hit. You would have to push reallyhard to get the first note and the second note may not work at all.

Regarding cabasa size and pitch, I am not too sure there is such a thing as awrong pitch, as there are the three different types of berimbau, each with a dif-ferent pitch. Of course, once this set of categories has been mobilized, aberimbau could be too low or high pitch to be one of the three types, gunga[bass] etc. Pitch of course is a product mostly of the cabasa. Although myknowledge of physics tells me a tighter string should also alter pitch (as with aguitar) I am not sure a berimbau is precise enough as a pitch device for this tohave any impact.

In this long, serious comment, Trovao reveals a great deal of experiential,embodied musical knowledge. Although he says he can only speculate aboutPerseuss concerns, he can speculate in ways Bruxa could not begin to doherself.



Capoeira is intensely physical, thoroughly embodied. Talking allowsTrovao and Bruxa to articulate Trovaos embodied knowledge, as in the fol-lowing dialogues on kicking and falling. In their shared project, and in theanalyses that follow, the tacit knowledge of embodiment is contrasted withthe explicit knowledge of the talk. The embodied understanding is contrastedwith the observational eye and ear, and this tension mirrors the endless dia-logues between experience and knowledge that characterize enculturationinto a new cultural milieu. The two-handed project parallels the inner dia-logues that the single-handed ethnographer has: of engagement and disen-gagement, of commitment and detachment, of belonging and marginality,and of emotion versus detachment.

Kicks and KickingB: Tell me about the kicks in capoeira: you said once that having done karate gave

you a head start in the capoeira kickscan you explain that a bit more?T: Yeahfor sure: I guess that if you look at it at a basic, a fundamental level, it is

somethingprobably to do with how power is generated: as you know wellbecause youve seen it in capoeira, most of the power is generated from spin-ning and momentumyou role on the floor and you stand up in the kick.

B: Yes.T: Its all about maintaining the spin and the momentum. Whereas with the type

of karate I did, and its fairly common among karates, the fundamental princi-ple was to use the muscles in your legs.

B: Right.T: A lot of it is punching but also kicking. The point was that you keep your back

straight and everything is to do with twisting your hips from an angled posi-tion . . . and keeping the back straight the power of your back leg is pushedthrough to your hands or the front leg.

There is simply no way that a nonparticipant could understand the differ-ences between kicks in two martial arts as well as Trovao can, because heembodies the experience. Bruxa could watch karate and capoeira for manyhours and never get that experience. This dialogue goes on:

B: Did your karate experience help with learning capoeira kicks?T: I did karate for quite a long time and I got quite good at it, so I mean some of the

more advanced techniques strayed a little bit more into kind of momentumterritory.

B: Right.

Trovao stands up, moves into a space and demonstrates a kick that Bruxahas seen taught many times and used in many games.



T: What in karate is called Mawashi-geri, which is when you bring your footaround like that. Martelo in capoeira. That is exactly the same as in karate but alot of capoeira kicks like the Queixadas and the Armadas, the spinning kicks,they dont feature in karate at all. I guess it wasnt too hard for me to pick upcapoeira. . . .

B: Though you hadnt trained for 2 or 3 years?T: But I always felt that I had some sort of latent flexibility in me and I could coor-

dinate well.B: Mmmm.T: So that all helps me. If you look at my game now, my kicking and the things that

are closest to karate Im much better at than things like headstands and hand-stands which are alien. Im really quite poor at them if truth be known.[Laughs]

Bruxa reflects on how several of the men had come to capoeira from othermartial arts and would share Trovaos self-evaluation. Some of the womenhave come from gymnastics or yoga and find the handstands and headstandsmore familiar than the kicks. This gives Bruxa a whole set of research ques-tions to follow up.

Falling OverOn another occasion, later in the fieldwork, Bruxa asks Trovao to expand

on a remark he had made during a weekend-long training event, again aboutthe embodied expertise of the disciplined body. In capoeira, when two peo-ple play and fight, if one succeeds in throwing, knocking, or tricking the otherinto falling to the floor, he or she is the winner. Expert players can alwaysdefeat novices and sometimes choose to do so. In the United States andEurope, capoeira is taught as a noncontact sport and throws are discouraged,as are kicks that make contact. In Brazil, especially in male working-classstreet games, actual fights take place. Outside Brazil, in novicesbaptism cer-emony (Batizado), they are ceremonially thrown by a superior player as theirformal entry to the craft. In training classes, attacking moves are taught, usu-ally by the teacher knocking over one of the students. Bruxa, who has noexperience of a contact sport, again seeks to learn from the embodied exper-tise of Trovao:

B: Now you said at the weekend that with your karate background you were goodat falling.

T: Mm.B: Can you just talk that through again?T: Yeah, I mean thats not necessarily a formal mechanism that they taught me in

karate. It was my kind of coping strategy within karate when I was a kid.



B: Yes.T: We trained in an old church hall with a firm wooden floor and when you do a

takedown in karate its much more bam whack, and you hit the person acrossthe neck and they go thud down. I would just get used to falling. You knew itwas coming.

B: Yes.T: And you would just make all your muscles really loose.B: Yes.T: So that youd just fall down really easily as soon as they touched you.B: Yes.T: You fall. You dont fight him, let them force you down.B: Right.T: You just flop down and when you go on the floor you dont mind. You spin

around and the momentum goes away instead of you stopping it on one thud.

Here, Trovao has used embodied adolescent memories of karate and howhe learnt to fall so he was not hurt, even though the floor was hard, in his newhobby of capoeira. The embodied skills, of going loose and spinning onthe floor, are made explicit. Trovao goes on to contrast the regular take-downs in karate with the rare knockdowns in capoeira:

T: You dont get that when youre training with the other pupils in the class itsonly when Achilles pulls you out to demonstrate takedowns against youbecause hes the only one who can do it properly.

B: Yes.T: And hes the one that could [laughs] do a takedown especially when hes dem-

onstrating. You also never know what takedown hes going to do.B: No.T: Thats, thats the worst thing because hell show you a takedown and all of a

sudden hell say, You could do this one as well, and attack and you fall in theother direction. But as soon as I go, I just let myself go and a nice comfortablefloor means I dont really remember being hurt by falling over, which youcould be.

Bruxa is learning three related things here. In training classes, students arenot supposed to knock each other over, so, unlike karate, Trovao needs hislearned skill of how to fall only when he is chosen as Achilless demonstra-tion partner. Subsequently, Trovao commented that he engaged in the self-conscious analytic comparison of his embodied karate experience with hislife as a capoeirista only when in dialogue with Bruxa. Second, both Bruxaand Trovao know that Achilles chooses Trovao for demonstrations of attacksleading to takedowns because Trovao knows how to fall without getting hurt.Achilles has praised him for falling well. He flicked me over one day, and



when I was lying there on the floor Achilles said, Ah, Trovao, you fall downso good [laughs]. Third, Achilles uses these demonstrations not only toteach the class a takedown but also to remind even the most advanced andserious students that he is far, far better than they are and can always outwitand out maneuver them. This is, in a mild way, an example of the deceit andtrickery (malicia) that is at the heart of capoeira (Lewis, 1992) and of itsmultiple possibilities.

Loyalties and LineagesTrovao trains with one teacher, Achilles, in one lineage of capoeira. Loy-

alty is required by capoeira teachers, as Lewis (1992) and Reis (2003)explained. As Achilles says, Trust your teacher . . . or leave! Bruxa is ableto observe other teachers because being a researcher, loyalty is not manda-tory in the same way that it is required of discipulos. Trovao explains thereciprocal loyalty and discipleship between student and teacher as follows:

When you watch DVDs, or videos, or clips on Web sites, or demonstrations bymasters, you look out for teachers you know. Ive seen the DVD of the Batizadonow and Ive seen some of the video clips from our site and some of the clips,shots, of various masters playing and when Achilles is on I think to myself Ah,thats my instructor. And you do feel almost a sense of, ownership is per-haps the wrong word, but personal possession.

Loyalty to one teacher, and the sheer physical exhaustion that comes withserious training, are double-edged issues in fieldwork. Bruxa, as a nonpartic-ipant observer, can see things that Trovao does not and can more easily com-pare teachers. Yet Trovao has the embodied experience when he spins, kicks,sweats, and falls and when he picks up the berimbau and balances it on hisfinger. These are simply not available to a nonparticipant observer: Unlessyou have tried to balance a berimbau yourself or been knocked over repeat-edly, you cannot know these things with your body. However, the styles of theteachers, their rhetoric, their strategies to create axe (the good energy thatempowers capoeiristas), and their ability to build up a loyal clientele ofdiscipulos are visible from the sidelines. Focusing on the rhetorical strategiesof a teacher when you are both upside down and you are concentrating on bal-ancing there, exhausted, and dripping with sweat, is probably impossible.

Talking together allows Bruxa and Trovao to reflect on different teachersthey have known. In the following discussion, we reflect on Achilles, theinstructor watched and learned from most; Perseus, a very different teacher;and Cadmus, a man who taught spasmodically in Tolnbridge some years ago.



Good capoeira classes are characterized by both clear instruction in themoves and ax:

B: You know this thing that you said to me, and three or four other people havenow said it as well: Perseus is a better teacher, but Achilles has more ax. Haveyou got any thoughts about what it is about Achilles that generates ax or whyPerseus doesnt? Have you got any analytic or personal thoughts about it?

T: Perseus will have a session going when you will be moving around and every-thing like that and then hell come along and he will stop the music, Achillesdoesnt stop the music, Perseus will stop the music and hell stand there andtalk. He wont shout over the music and run around at the same time like Achil-les does. Hell talk in a soft and normal voice. Even from the very beginning ofa class, the warm-up, we all stand in a circle and its a lot slower, its not likeCome on, guys, lets do this like Achilles.

B: Ive seen Perseus teach several times now, and one thing I noticed was that heseemed to be spending longer actually breaking moves down into their compo-nent parts. Like the queida de rins [a move many novices find hard to do].

T: Yeah I know.B: He seemed to be demonstrating it almost joint by joint.T: Doing it exactly.B: Showing where your elbow should be. Now is that what you mean by a good

teacher?T: Totally, totally, and that can be quite valuable.B: Yes.T: But it takes the adrenalin out of his session.B: Right.T: Whereas Achilles would just do something and jump in the air and spin around

and say Do that [laughs] and then everyone stands there bewildered for a bitand by the time someone has a go hes jumping in a different way.

B: Right, OK, so its partly then because Perseus certainly spends more time talk-ing about the philosophy and the history and all those kind of things.

T: At the end of every session youll sit in a circle and hell ask, So what did youthink of todays session?

B: Yes.T: And Ill say, It was really special [laughs].

Here, Trovao is reminding Bruxa that introspection and sharing introspec-tion are not part of his enjoyment of capoeira. He enjoys playing the dance,fight, game, and the music, not the public philosophical musing Perseusencourages.

B: Because Achilles never does that. Cadmus used to do it, didnt he? You all hadto say what you had got out of the days class.



T: Yeah, yeah, I forgot. Perseus is very much more about talking. One day, I thinkthis was the first session I went to, we all went out for a drink, then we wentback to Raksha and Phaos flat and we had some videotapes, some really goodtapes of maculele5 and things like that that Perseus showed us and he was goingon in what seems to be fairly typical Perseus-speak about What good is thetreasure at the bottom of the ocean? He was saying, It has no value and thatwas his metaphor. Then he started talking about capoeira masters who havelots of information but dont share it and he says thats why he shares informa-tion and that is quite important too.

Here the dialogue develops our insights into what makes good capoeirateaching and what creates good ax. Bruxa has watched Perseus teach moreoften than Trovao has been a guest student in his classes. She has seen the dif-ferences between them. Trovao, however, has felt the ax in his muscles andhis heart; and with most of his closest friends in capoeira, has chosen Achil-les over Perseus as his teacher. Therefore, he can use his embodied knowl-edge to contrast the two regimes. Things that Bruxa can see in a detachedway are felt by Trovao.

Before and After the BatizadoThis dialogic reflection can be seen in a conversation about what it feels

like to achieve the first corda after a years training with one teacher and how,when cohorts gain their first, blue, belt together, they are all changed by therite de passage. Again, Bruxa and Trovao are seated in an office in the univer-sity, reflecting on how being baptized into the capoeira lineage, gainingthe blue belt, had altered Trovaos experience and that of his coevals. Trovaodescribed the first classes after the Batizado in response to an observationfrom Bruxa:

B: I thought everyone looked more confident after the Batizado, but is that just meseeing a difference because I had been away for 3 weeks?

T: When we came back, we had what seemed to be our first proper session, in thatclub, for quite a while. And I think he definitely pushed us harder. Achilles, hedecided, weve got a blue corda now, hes going to make us do better stuff, so,so, we were pushed harder, and I felt that I grew in confidence from doing it, soyeah, I cant, I cant see any reason why that wouldnt be the case for everyone.

B: Mmm. You know Im just standing here watching, it just struck me, some of thepeople who are not as fit as you, havent taken capoeira as seriously and arentas good as youwho Ive been watching. They looked as though they hadmore confidence, that if they tried a kick they would be able to do it, as opposedto standing there, knowing they couldnt do it. They looked as though they



were practicing moves they felt they could do, rather than trying to rememberwhat it was that had been demonstrated to them.

T: Yeah, mmm. Well, its, well, its certainly not because we were trained reallywell at the Batizado, because there was only one teaching session and that wasall Angolan.6 We basically did things wed never done beforeand things thatdont translate that well into the kinds of training that we do, you know, in thesessions. But since the Batizado, the training sessions have changed. Everyonesaid both that Achilles is pushing us a bit more, which made you feel better, andit also just looks better if people are in the right clothes as well.7 I used to train inshorts and then I just bought some white trousers, and just by doing that I feltthat I was better cause you couldnt see how bendy my knee was so much andthings like that.

B: And did the group change socially?T: Yeah, I mean everyoneit was really different between the training sessions

before and after because, you know, before, a couple of times Id gone to thepub with a few people, but, but afterwards Ive been to quite a few of theirhouses and people started exchanging phone numbers and going out togetherand stuff.

Here Trovao is drawing on his own experiences to make four importantpoints about the rite de passage. First, having the right clothes changes thecapoeira novices self-confidence and self-presentation (Stephens &Delamont, 2005). Second, the expectations of the instructor change. Third,although there were some master classes appended to the Batizado, they werenot immediately useful in improving technique. Fourth, the social cohesionof the student group changed. These are all reported for Beribazu by Reis(2003) in his autoethnography of capoeira teaching in Warsaw. Bruxa,because she does not wear the uniform, take the classes, mix socially with thestudents, or get knocked over by a mestre (master) in a Batizado, feels partic-ularly distant from these changes.

Thus far, the benefits of the dual roles of Trovao and Bruxa have beenforegrounded in a reflexive way. There are, of course, dangers in the project,and it is an analysis of these that brings the article to an end.

DangersThere are dangers in two-handed ethnography, which fall unequally

because of our respective histories. Bruxa chose capoeira as a fieldwork sitefor intellectual, academic reasons: a desire to find an engrossing thing tostudy in Tolnbridge, a love of Brazil, and a fascination inspired by Lewissbook (1992). Trovao came to capoeira as a hobby, quite distinct from his aca-demic life: He has more to lose from the joint research.



Trovao could lose his main hobby, and his pleasure in it, by being forcedto be reflexive, to intellectualize, to write, to publish. Capoeira could be col-onized by the academic and the intellectual. The play, the pleasure,could be destroyed by the intellectual agenda. Trovao could lose his friendsin the capoeira class if he were thought to be there as a researcher rather thanas a player, especially if there were any threats to the privacy of the otherplayers rather than a study of their public performance in capoeira classes.

Bruxa could valorize Trovaos experience and understanding of capoeiraat the expense of the experiences and understandings of others: Having acoworker with skills and talents can make an ethnographer lazy. The experi-ence of other novices in the United Kingdom, and perhaps especially of thewomen, and of men who are Brazilian or Portuguese (and quite a few learnersare) could be submerged beneath Trovaos career as a capoeirista. Becauseshe is older, and many of the capoeiristas are, or are like, students in her homeuniversity, Bruxa is always poised to fall out of analytic mode and into aninterventionist one:

There has been a Batizado in Longhampston, and it is the meal break betweenthe ceremony and a public demonstration. Bruxa and Trovao are in a queue forthe evening meal with several Cloisterham and Tolnbridge people, and some ofthe new graduates. One young man asks, Can one of you guys show me how totie this corda? Before any of the Tolnbridge men could speak, Bruxa heardherself saying Well, Im sure they canbut you need to know youve got it onthe wrong sidemen tie their cordas on the right hip, yours is on the girlsside. The young man whipped off his cordaand two Tolnbridge menshowed him how to thread and tie it on the correct hip.

Writing up the notes Bruxa was furious with herself: too interventionist,too precipitate, and data were missed. Would the Tolnbridge and Cloisterhammen have helped him tie the corda but left the knot on the wrong hip? Bruxasprotective instinctsbased on an earlier incidenthad triumphed over adata collection opportunity. Some months earlier Bruxa had recorded,

It is a Friday night in Tolnbridge: the hours practice and instruction is over,they have paid for the lesson, and the roda is about to begin. Achilles plays anopening ladainha (introductory solo) but does not put any players into the cir-cle. Instead he stops the music, and gives a little talk. In this lineage he saysmen wear their cordas with the knot and the dangling ends on the right, andwomen on the left. Baloo, who was awarded his about three weeks ago, iswearing his on the wrong side. He blushes, everyone laughs, and he rapidlychanges it to the other side. Achilles stresses that this is not meant to be dis-criminatorywomen are equal in capoeirabut it is just the way the Found-



ing Mestre decreed it. (It is rare for Achilles to teach the history or etiquette ofthe lineage explicitly.)

In her reflexive diary, Bruxa had recorded feeling sorry for Baloo and theembarrassment he must have felt being a cultural incompetent in front of hisfellow students. In Longhampstead, Bruxas desires to teach, to be bossy, andto be maternal and protective, had completely swamped the proper concernsof the ethnographer.8

As good, critically reflexive ethnographers, it is by facing these dangersthat the research will develop. When Travao realizes that he reflects on hiskarate career compared to his capoeira career only when Bruxa asks him to,or when Bruxa realizes that what she thought she saw was or, more impor-tant, was not experienced in that way by the students, the research advances.

ConclusionsThe interrelated movements in sociology toward (re)discovering the

body, toward (re)discovering rhetorical concerns, and toward (re)discover-ing the sociological relevance of studying cultural forms are integrated in thisarticle. The deceptive discourse (Lewis, 1992) of capoeira is, playfully,represented by the deceptive discourses of the article itself.

Notes

1. Classes take place in many British university cities, including four we have calledCloisterham, Longhampston, Tolnbridge, and Twelford. Achilles teaches in Cloisterham andTolnbridge, Perseus in Longhampston and Twelford. Regular training sessions are offered in allfour cities at least two evenings per week, and there are also classes on Saturdays in Cloisterhamand Longhampston. Classes last 90 minutes, of which an hour is supervised practice and the restlectures and a roda: the actual play of the game in the ring. In addition, there are public perfor-mances in the street, or pubs, or at festivals. Periodically, there are 2- to 4-day-long festivals ofcapoeira, when baptisms and belt ceremonies are held, visiting masters teach and award thebelts, and there are parties. Achilles might fly to Budapest to be a visiting teacher, the seriousCloisterham capoeiristas might all travel to Longhampston for an extra class with Perseus andhis students if he has a guest master visiting, Achilles might ask for volunteers from hisCloisterham and Tolnbridge classes to come with him to Antwerp, or a Tolnbridge student mightchoose to train in Cloisterham on a Saturday if she has missed her regular class.

2. Achilles has actually given Bruxa a real capoeira nickname as an honorary class mem-ber, which he uses.

3. Readers unfamiliar with capoeira can consult http://www.capoeirasj.com/history/index.html. There are interviews with American women capoeiristas at http://www.gracemillenium.com/spring00/capoeira.html.

4. Bruxas access to and roles in capoeira classes are discussed in Delamont (2005). InBeribazu, the lineage to which Achilles belongs, the social sciences are respected, and many of



the mestres and instructors have PhDs and publish books. Bruxas access is also facilitated by herenthusiasm for paying the same fee as trainees in all classes.

5. Maculele is a dance in which the players beat sticks together, based on machete fighting inthe days of Brazilian slavery done in grass skirts, to a set of distinctive songs and drumming.Beribazu teaches maculele and other Brazilian dances, which are incorporated into publicdisplays.

6. There are two traditions in capoeira, Angola and regional. Achilles belongs to Beribazu,which melds the two, although regional (which has more emphasis on kicks and less on workingvery close to the ground) is more prominent. Students of Achilles and Perseus find the classestaught by visiting Angola specialists particularly exhausting.

7. Students can attend a Batizado only if they have bought the uniform of their teachers lin-eage and a T-shirt celebrating that Batizado. After a Batizado, all the students who were initiatedhave a corda and the correct trousers and T-shirts.

8. Trovao and Lunghri both said subsequently, when asked, that they had learned on whichhip to tie their cordas at their Batizado, by osmosis, and that they would have told theLonghampston man to tie his on the right hip if Bruxa had not done so.

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Neil Stephens is a research associate at the Centre for Economic and Social Aspects ofGenomics at Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, where he is conducting an eth-nography of the U.K. stem cell bank. His doctoral thesis explores the social construction of mac-roeconomic knowledge, drawing on elite interviews. He trained in Shotokan Karate for 11 years



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Documents

Balancing the Berimbau- Embodied Ethnographic Understanding