Translocality and Afro-Brazilian Imaginaries in Globalised Capoeira
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Inkeri Aula TRANSLOCALITY AND AFRO-BRAZILIAN IMAGINARIES IN GLOBALISED CAPOEIRA abstract Afro-Brazilian capoeira exemplifies how communal practices connect multilocally. This article investigates how the fight-game-art forms a translocal culture, uniting practitioners in diverse localities, and connects them to a transnationally created Black Atlantic heritage. The multi-sited ethnographic approach focuses mostly on Salvador, Northeastern Brazil, where the purity of Afro-Brazilian traditions raises polemic. Through critical observation of capoeira’s dual development in Brazil, transnationality is asserted as a historical continuity in capoeira communities’ imaginaries. To grasp how globalised capoeira maintains its connection to Afro-Brazilian history, the analysis of capoeira’s traditionalism is complemented by a description of the formation of capoeira practice in the faraway location of Eastern Finland, where capoeira’s creativity and categorization-resistant, holistic nature remain central. Through the densely historicized tradition of capoeira, minoritarian views on transnational connections, on the colonial encounter, and on the effects of transatlantic slavery are shared in multiple locations. Keywords: translocal, transnational, Capoeira Angola, Capoeira Regional, Black Atlantic, Afro-Brazilian, multi-sited ethnography Eu sou angoleiro que veio de angola Cheguei para vadiar, o iaiá, nessa roda I am angoleiro coming from angola I came to play (to fool around, to play capoeira) in this circle (capoeira song)1 The globalised fight-art of capoeira is imbued spirit, capoeira often forms a central with historical stories that also become community of belonging. In the capoeira ‘our history’ for participants from multiple game, martial movements are combined into backgrounds. At the intersections of such a dialogical interaction of two players at a time, categories as sport and culture, body and accompanied by a circle producing percussion suomen antropologi | volume 42 issue 1 spring 2017 67 Inkeri Aula music and songs that reference the history of capoeira’s local enactments vary across time Africans and their descendants in Brazil. To and space, the connections between sites are at ‘come from angola’2 does not refer directly to the least as important as within them. In this article, nation-state in West Central Africa, but to an I propose that the contemporary translocality imaginative geography of the art. of capoeira culture should be conceived of as In this article,3 I investigate how the a continuation of its transnational history. multimodal practice of capoeira forms a ‘translocal culture’ uniting practitioners in Transnational, diverse localities and connecting them to translocal, and MUlti- a transnationally formed, diasporic Afro- sited: constrUcting Brazilian heritage, deviating from a modern THE field colonial framework. By ‘transnationality’ I refer to historical cross-border processes and Capoeira’s global popularity has grown signif- their contemporary re-imagination wherein icantly in recent decades, based on commu- the capoeira communities situate themselves nal networks of practitioners and associations in relation to Brazil, Africa, and elsewhere. In involving different scales of institutionalisation, order to understand how these relations are local group formation, and transnational con- constituted, it is necessary to distinguish the nectivity. Unlike the Andersonian imaginary two main lines of capoeira’s modernisation: community of nationhood (Anderson 1983), ‘Africanist’ Capoeira Angola and ‘Brazilianist’ the imaginary of the local capoeira groups Capoeira Regional. The concept of ‘translocality’ connects them to distant places and cultural emphasises the mutually constitutive nature settings, such as Brazilian groups and mestres of different sites, and attends to the local (acknowledged teachers, who ‘master the art’), situatedness of the practice. other filial groups in Brazil and in other coun- My multi-sited research field is primarily tries, and capoeira lore connecting capoeiris- focused on traditionalist Capoeira Angola tas with Afro-Brazilian heroes, adversities, and in Salvador da Bahia, Northeastern Brazil, a mythical Africa. When a group of Finnish, a popular pilgrimage destination for capoeira predominantly white capoeiristas (practition- practitioners internationally and capital of ers of capoeira), sing in praise of the legendary Afro-Brazilian culture (Collins 2015). To seventeenth-century freedom fighter, Zumbi comprehend the different translocal formations dos Palmares, they identify with an alternate and their respective imaginative geographies, knowledge of colonial history—that of maroon the research design also follows divergent rebellions, memories of African kingdoms, and understandings of capoeira in the Santos area, resistance to slavery. and their translocation to capoeira practice My research data on the capoeira in a faraway location of Eastern Finland, via community is produced in field encounters George E. Marcus’ methodological trope of and collaborations, understood from the ‘following’ (Marcus 1998: 90–95). At all the sites, epistemological perspective of a multi-sited capoeira’s creativity and holistic nature, resisting methodology reaching from Eastern Finland categorisations, remain central. Although via Portugal and Santos to Bahia and back. suomen antropologi | volume 42 issue 1 spring 2017 68 Inkeri Aula Formulated by George E. Marcus in response practitioners and mestres.4 The interviews were to the collapse of the life-world / system constructed around my broader research themes dichotomy as a background for ethnography of ritual experiences of liberation in capoeira for (Marcus 1998: 79–104), multi-sitedness is not black Bahian and white European practitioners. only research with various sites; nor is it a return On returning from the field, I re-encountered to the comparative frame. Contrary to a timeless one of the mestres in my research, mestre Valmir ‘ethnographic present’, a multi-sited research of FICA, giving a workshop in Helsinki to his imaginary looks at how local experience is not future filial group—a transnational field indeed. only embedded in global connections, but is By analysing the Black Atlantic traditions also itself formative of the global (Marcus 1998 in capoeira’s development, I aim to demonstrate and 2009; Coleman and von Hellermann 2011; transnationality, not as a novelty brought about Tsing 2015: 17–43). by globalisation, but as a constant historical My own background in capoeira—from condition of a tradition (capoeira) rooted first experiences in Brazil in 1996, to taking in a specific context (Afro-Brazilian history part in a self-created group in Joensuu, Eastern of transatlantic slavery). This transnational Finland (1999–2006)—is intertwined with development is reflected today in the rings and my research routes. In 2002 I departed on capoeira schools of Bahia, a central location five months of field research into capoeira in in the formation of the concept of Afro- Portugal, as a side result of which a Brazilian Brazilianity and the struggle for recognition teacher Melqui, today a mestre, was invited to of African cultural heritage. To understand teach in Joensuu occasionally between 2002 and capoeira’s translocations elsewhere, the Bahian 2006. Thus, my own practice was founded in ethnography is augmented by a glimpse of mestre Melqui’s style of Senzala dos Santos, taken intense participation in the creation of capoeira as a type of contemporary Capoeira Regional, in Joensuu (1999–2006); attention to the yet which originally sprang from traditional capoeira scene in Finland since, with occasional angola style and evolved through incorporation participation; short field visits to capoeira in of techniques of Capoeira Regional. The main the Santos area (the State of São Paulo, Brazil, branch of my participant observation took place where my interests focused on Afro-Brazilian within traditionalist Capoeira Angola in Bahia, spirituality in relation to capoeira); and in January-April 2005, where I participated background perspectives from Brazilian mestres primarily in two groups (FICA–Bahia, Semente and their Portuguese students in the former do Jogo de Angola) and diverse public roda colony. events (capoeira rings). The Bahian research data The follow-up to the initiation of capoeira comprises field notes on discussions with several activities in Joensuu is based on personal practitioners and teachers from various groups; archives and on remembering the participatory 250 photographs and video clips; collections experience as one of the partial perspectives of of capoeira songs; different texts, journals, my multi-sited approach (on partiality, Marcus and website content produced by capoeira 1998: 5). The remembering process could be communities; and twelve recorded interviews described as autoethnographic, whereby the (30–60 min) with European and Bahian researcher is (1) a full member in the research suomen antropologi | volume 42 issue 1 spring 2017 69 Inkeri Aula group or setting; (2) visible as such a member connections preceding the nation-state are in published texts; and (3) committed to often contrasted with contemporary velocity developing theoretical understandings of and scale of global connections (Matory 2005: broader social phenomena (Anderson 2006). 2–5; Vertovec 2009: 15–21). Here I apply the One of the key contradictions emerging notion of transnationalism both to the processes from my data opposes claims