Hello,

I came across this old Capoeira Angola documentary Yesterday, and thought it was so cool that everybody should see it, so here it is.

I hope you enjoy it.

GREETINGS!

What I mean by the above, is that there’s no capoeira ion what I’m sharing with you here, but there is a lot in terms of revolution, and reclaiming OUR HERITAGE.

Check it out.

Classified X is a 1998 French-US documentary movie written by Melvin Van Peebles, directed by Mark Daniels and narrated by Van Peebles, that details the history of black people in American cinema throughout the 20th century. from the DVD case:

“…the very first thing we must do is to reconquer our own minds. The biggest obstacle to the Black revolution in America is our conditioned susceptibility to the white man’s program. In short, the fact is that the white man has colonized our minds. We’ve been violated, confused and drained by this colonization and from this brutal, calculated genocide, the most effective and vicious racism has grown, and it is with this starting point in mind and the intention to reverse the process that I went into cinema in the first f***ing place.” -Melvin Van Peebles

Melvin Van Peebles, director of the breakthrough movie Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, turns his acerbic 4 insights and acid-dripped humor on Hollywood’s utilization of its sepia citizens. Classified X examines the treatment of .A black characters throughout the history of American cinema. Van Peebles uses examples from classic films beginning with footage by Thomas Edison in 1903 to the present, tracing how Hollywood has aided and abetted the public perception of the African-American down through the years. From its earliest days, Van Peebles says, Hollywood reflected society’s_ fear of blacks and countered with wish-fulfilling images of African Americans as servile, ignorant, superstitious, or untrustworthy. With candor and wit, he explores the institutionalization of racism before Sweetback and afterwards.

Shared for historical purposes. I do not own the rights.

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I will be researching more about this, but for now….

JUST WATCH.

Hello,

Short post here. I said I was gonna post about some of the Capoeira events that happen in the beginning of the year.

This one is actually from December 2018, and it’s a celebration of the late Mestre João Pequeno’s birthday in 2018. It would have been his 101st birthday.

Hi everybody,

One of my favorite Capoeira songs is called “Vamos a Vadiar Angola”, sung here by Mestre Ferradura, the guy in the ponytail.

And check out his amazing game… Lyrics are under the video.

Vamos vadiar Angola

Vamos vadiar Angola

Let’s play around Angola

Angola Vamos vadiar

Angola let’s play around

Pra lá

Over there

Vamos vadiar Angola

Let’s play around Angola

Todos Vamos vadiar

We are all going to play around

Daqui pra li, de cá pra lá

From here to there, here to there

De cá pra lá vamos vadiar

From there to here let’s play

Vamos vadiar angola

Let’s play around Angola

Angola Vamos vadiar

Angola let’s play around

Pra lá

Over there

So, I bet you’re wondering why I mentioned this?

In the martial arts, one of our main goals is to be able to apply our skills to a resisting opponent, and one good way to develop that skill is by SPARRING.

Sparring is a form of training common to many martial arts, and combat sports. Although the form varies between different styles, it is basically ‘free-form’ fighting (relatively), with enough rules, customs, or agreements to minimize injuries.

However, in Capoeira Angola, we don’t really spar, we PLAY.

As you can see in the above video, Although we do exchange blows, it’s done in a very lighthearted, joking manner.

In fact, other names for Capoeira were jogo de crianca (children’s game) brincadeira (joking around), or vadiacao (loitering, hanging out)

You know, it took me a long time to write this post, a couple of months in fact. The main reason is I couldn’t articulate the benefits of PLAYING, as opposed to SPARRING, as a more useful way for a capoeirista, or any other martial artist, to develop their skills.

But then, about a week ago, I came across this amazing video made by Jesse Enkamp. Now in case you don’t know, Jesse Enkamp a.k.a The Karate Nerd™ has a super cool YouTube channel, THE KARATE NERD.

You can watch it here⇩    / karatebyjesse  

Anyway, here is the video below. I also posted some links for the video description on YouTube below the video, that backs up what was said in this video, for you “researchers” out there.

Research & Sources: Finite and Infinite Games by J. Carse – https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinit…

Dopamine, learning and motivation – https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn1406

Dopamine Plays Double Duty in Learning and Motivation – https://neurosciencenews.com/dopamine…

Why Your Brain on Stress Fails to Learn Properly – https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/bl…

‘Boxing is a mess’: the darkness and damage of brain trauma in the ring – https://www.theguardian.com/sport/202…

Using Play to Rewire & Improve Your Brain ｜ Huberman Lab Podcast 58 –    • Using Play to Rewire & Improve Your B…  

The Advice GSP Gives to Young Fighters: Joe Rogan’s MMA Show 107 w/Georges St-Pierre – https://open.spotify.com/episode/6dND…

Radio Rahim: Sparring, Not Fighting, Destroy Fighters – Joe Rogan’s MMA Show 107 –    • Radio Rahim: Sparring, Not Fighting, …  

The Yerkes-Dodson Law:    • PSYCH: THE YERKES-DODSON LAW  

Max Holloway: The BRUTAL Hand of God ｜ UFC Fighter Documentary –    • Max Holloway: The BRUTAL Hand of God …  

Mike Tyson: My belts are garbage –    • Mike Tyson: My belts are garbage  

MMA Athletes & Coaches on Light Sparring vs Hard Sparring:    • MMA Athletes & Coaches on Light Sparr…  

Max Halloway on His Performance Against Calvin Kattar: JRE MMA Show 103 with Max Holloway – https://open.spotify.com/episode/6nzG…

Joe Rogan – Hard VS Light Sparring With Max Holloway and Leon Edwards –    • Joe Rogan – Hard VS Light Sparring Wi…  

Gym Wars | Professional MMA Sparring | Part II by Jeff Sainlar Visuals –    • Gym Wars | Professional MMA Sparring …  

Fighters discuss the fine line between sparring hard and getting hurt by MMA Junkie –    • Fighters discuss the fine line betwee…  

Once again, please watch the KARATE NERD’S channel,   / karatebyjesse   You’ll find a lot of gems of knowledge here, even if you have no interest in Karate.

The video and the links above put up a very srong argument for the concept of play as a effective way to develop fighting skills, without hard sparring.

However, there is another area that the concept of play in capoeira can help it’s practitioners. And that is helping to heal from trauma.

On the KNOWLEDGE IS EMPOWERMENT, and the CAPOEIRA WAS NOT CREATED IN A VACUUM page, I typed that Capoeira was in part, developed as a response to the trauma that black people suffered during the slavery era.

Now I’m not going to go into too much detail about this subject in this post. If you want to now more, you can go to the 2 pages I mentioned above.

But I did post this video below you, which I also posted on one of the aforementioned pages. It\s frpm THE CAPOEIRA LIFE SHOW, and it explais a bit of what I’m talking about in a 2 minute video.

Well, That’s it for this post. I want yo leave you with this little tidbit:

YOU CAN LEARN TO FIGHT BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIGHT TO LEARN.

Although I don’t think this is from Capoeira Regional.

hI EVERYBODY,

I just saw this short video on YouTube, and decided to remind everybody that Capoeira is for everyone.

I might make this into a series… or not.

Well, it’s that time of year again! Now, for those of you who don’t know, here’s a small definition of Carnaval.

Carnival is an annual festival held the Friday afternoon before Ash Wednesday at noon, which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period before Easter. During Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry.

It is the most popular holiday in Brazil, and has become an event of huge proportions.Except for industrial production, retail establishments such as malls, and carnival-related businesses, the country unifies completely for almost a week and festivities are intense, day and night, mainly in coastal cities. Rio de Janeiro’s carnival alone drew 4.9 million people in 2011, with 400,000 being foreigners.

Historically its origins can be traced to the Portuguese Age of Discoveries when their caravels passed regularly through Madeira island, a territory which already celebrated emphatically its carnival season, and where they were loaded with goods but also people and their ludic and cultural expressions.

Now I posted that in January, there are a lot of capoeira events leading up to carnaval. I will make some short posts about some of these events shortly.

I will end this post with a small video of carnaval 2024 in Salvador, Bahia.