Contemporary Capoeira in Rio de Janeiro, 1948-1982

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines singing and percussion with dance, combat and street theatre. Two practitioners play a 'game' within a 'circle' formed by the musicians and other participants. Enslaved Africans and Creoles developed the practice in the port cities of late colonial and imperial Brazil. It survived initial harsh repression until being recognised as a national sport and tradition in the twentieth century. Two competing styles were responsible for its modernisation in the 1930s-50s. They merged during the following decades into the current mainstream 'Contemporary' style, now taught and played around the world. The capoeira circle and the knowledge of capoeira teachers ('masters') were recognised by the Brazilian government as integral to the nation's intangible cultural heritage in 2008, and by UNESCO in 2014.

The project aims to better understand the emergence of this Contemporary Capoeira by gathering material from different sources. It will conduct interviews with 40 surviving capoeira masters from the first and second generations, responsible for the development and expansion of the new, modernised style of capoeira during the 1950s-70s in 'Greater Rio de Janeiro' - which includes not only the city centre, but also its poorer suburbs and its marginalised periphery. The project will also systematically collect further material from local sound, image and newspaper archives to complement and corroborate these testimonies. With the help of some well-known and respected capoeira masters, who will act as project consultants, it will furthermore encourage the local capoeira community to donate materials such as old interviews or photographs. The collected material will be organised and stored in digital format on servers in Essex and Rio de Janeiro, in close collaboration with our project partner, the Laboratory of Oral History and Image at the Federal Fluminense University. The advanced age of the masters to be interviewed, and the absence of a coherent plan to rescue these crucial testimonies for capoeira history in the current political and financial crisis in Rio make this project all the more urgent.

Drawing on my previous experience, I will provide the intellectual leadership needed to bring together capoeira masters and practitioners, academics from various disciplines and digital specialists to deliver a range of accessible outputs, the most important being the creation of a long-lasting and sustainable database on capoeira. This raw material will be made available for registered users via the website, and will significantly facilitate further research by other academics and non-professional capoeira historians. An edited selection of the interviews, and complementary material with explanations will be made available on the website and in a virtual exhibition. Around 40 short clips will present an overview of the social and cultural backgrounds and life stories of these very diverse characters and careers. They will conjure the ambience of historic capoeira circles, and portray a culturally rich but also socially and racially divided city. A digital exhibition hosted by the Afro-Digital Museum will provide an appealing summary of the results for broader audiences, and will help schoolteachers to comply with recent Brazilian legislation that makes the teaching of Afro-Brazilian history compulsory in all secondary schools. Teaching will also be facilitated by an itinerary following the memory sites of capoeira in central Rio and its historical suburbs. This guided tour will be incorporated into a mobile phone app for easier access. A knowledge exchange between staff from the British Library, Essex University and Brazilian partners on data management, making digital history and achieving digital dissemination will help to optimise the project's research and its online accessibility, as well as contributing to the development of skills for the staff involved in a range of areas.

One key aim of this project is to develop innovative ways for research results and academic content to be expressed in formats that are most used by non-academic audiences: webpages, clips, and mobile apps. By using these non-traditional formats creatively - whilst still respecting basic academic rules - the project aims to achieve impact on a wide range of people and groups:
1) The old capoeira masters from Greater Rio de Janeiro and their contribution to the emergence of a new style that became a globalized art form will become better appreciated by policy makers from Rio State and the general public. Hence the project can contribute to more recognition and hopefully a better status for these aging, and frequently destitute mestres.
2) Capoeiristas in Rio de Janeiro and its poorer periphery will obtain easier access to the knowledge and experience of older masters through the website, with its clips and material, and the digital exhibition. This can strengthen their confidence and sense of belonging to a valorised community, and support their applications for community projects and funding.
3) Inhabitants of the city and surrounding state, tourists and other visitors to Rio de Janeiro will be able to get a deeper understanding of the importance of capoeira history in the centre of the city, its suburbs, and its marginalized periphery. Through the app "Present Pasts" for mobile phones, in particular the Capoeira Itinerary (a guided tour), but also the function "Close to Me", they will be able to identify places of memory of capoeira, its links to other cultural forms such as samba and Afro-Brazilian religion, and learn about their significance for the broader social and cultural history of Rio;
4) Secondary schoolteachers will be able to access the materials from app, website and digital exhibition, which will provide them with local and concrete material, parts of which will be specially designed to that end, to fulfil the 2003 and 2007 Brazilian federal laws which makes teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian history compulsory in all primary and secondary schools (at present there is a lack of material);
5) The national and international media will have access to a website, virtual exhibition and app that provides reliable, and concise information regarding the key figures of the capoeira universe in Greater Rio de Janeiro including its poorer periphery, allowing more actors to become visible (at present some groups in the wealthier neighbourhoods get privileged access and most news coverage);
6) Capoeiristas worldwide, and broader international audiences able to read English or Portuguese, will be able to access website, watch the clips and visit the virtual exhibition, and learn more about the complex and dense history of their art, hence deepening their learning of capoeira and their understanding of this unique art form, Afro-Brazilian in its origin, but now a model of globalization from below.
A longer-term impact aim beyond the immediate scope of the project is to engage with (7) policy-makers at municipal and regional level. Media exposure of the project and its links with existing local capoeira and cultural initiatives will hopefully contribute to raise awareness among municipal culture secretaries of the Greater Rio boroughs that capoeiristas, especially in the periphery, can be vectors of culture and education, but need institutional support to fulfil that role. The signposting of relevant memory sites with QR codes, for instance, may encourage these policy-makers to display official memorial plaques on those locations. The project's various pathways to impact will hopefully contribute to capoeira gaining more overall visibility and respectability in Brazilian society, as well as supporting the ongoing process of institutionalisation initiated in 2008.