supposed to be some top guys in NYC, can’t remember names though.
As for the other stuff, a couple of things. As with all arts capoeira has evolved and branched out. Regional, what I mostly study, is more acrobatic then say angola. You might also say angola is more practical then regional. My take on it is that the acrobatics, while possibly being made to work, are more for the game, or roda and not for actual fighting. Believe me they still use capoeira to fight, especially in brazil and apparently it can get ugly. Doing the hand stands, the flips and all that is really unnecessary but if your quick enough…
There was the REAL African Fighting art
It’s still in there, and if anything I’d say real capoeristas have only improved upon it by adding techniques. From what I understand, Mestre Bimba was a love of Jujitsu, and integrated some of what he learned form that art into capoeira. It’s also evolved into a more acrobatic style for some people.
Part of the reason for my other thread was because you can see the inherent weaknesses in capoeira when doing it (in any art reall - anyone who claims to have the whole package with one art is an idiot). My thought was, what if the guy just charged in and took you down. Well, if all you knew was capoeira, you might be in trouble, depending on how good you were, and how good they were.
As an example, I fought a couple of capoeiras guys a few weeks before I joined. I found that they were incredibly hard to get a hold of, because they were constantly moving in unconventional ways. Of course I’m not the best grappler in the world either. Someone like MP may not have had any trouble at all in getting them wrapped up and on the ground.
The instructor at my school was telling me a story this past saturday about how he was at a batizado with mestre loka, the man who started the organization my school belongs too. They were playing and mestre took him down and jabbed his finger into a nerve cluster in his neck that made his whole body go sort of numb, he was shocked. To me, that just went ot show that even capoeira has a deeper level if you just take the time to look for it and understand it, train it.
Like I said, I’d be the first to admit that it is not practical but as with many arts and artists, dismissing it as ineffective because of an exeprience or two may be making a mistake.
The other thing to keep in mind is that those acrobatic moves the guys you were messing with aren’t what a capoeirista would call practical either. Some guys try it, the two I fought were always fooling around, it made things interesting in my mind, and it wasn’t as easy to deal with as I thought. I couldn’t use the ubiquitous “I just did this” statement to cover even the more acrobatic stuff they were doing. Sometimes I hit them, sometimes they hit me.
I’d say capoeiras strengths are in kicking and sweeping on a practical level. the art itself can you give you an incredible amount of bodily control, but so can other arts.
by the way, that stringed instrument is called the Birimbau pronounced “beedeembow” roughly.
, but nowadays its a bit straighter…
