Capoeira Com Mestre Sapoti

I had several highlights of my day today. Hearing my classmates debate issues of race, privilege, and social justice in lecture with Professor Clarice Mota was one. Learning of the deep interconnectedness of religion in Brazil from Professor Willys Santos was another. My top highlight though should be obvious: it’s the title of the blog post.

Lectures are great. I clearly love them, otherwise I wouldn’t have come back for a second helping of higher education after my first degree. Today was particularly great though; the lecturers who spoke were engaging and clearly very well informed. Still, between those two lectures and Portuguese class, I had been sitting for way too much of my day. You see where I’m going with this, right?

Fast forward to capoeira class. As soon as I walked in, I was interested at first not by the fluidity with which the experienced practitioners are moving, but by something else entirely: the instruments. I took in the sight of the pandeiro (similar to a tambourine with a drum head), the atabaque (similar to a large conga), the agogo (similar to two cowbells attached to each other), and the berimbau (a single-stringed instrument that isn’t really that similar to anything I’m familiar with). I was determined to get permission to play at least one of them before leaving.

After everyone arrived, we began, and we learned the ginga (the fundamental step in capoeira from which nearly all techniques are built), the aú (essentially a cartwheel), an esquiva (an escape), and our first kick. I worked up more of a sweat practicing these moves than I had anticipated.

Once we had practiced enough to perform these moves with some fluidity, the prerecorded track we had been learning to went off, and the instruments came out. Mestre Sapoti started a roda with the other more experienced practitioners playing instruments: three berimbaus, two pandeiros, an agogo, and an atabaque. Shortly after the music began, he called me up to play the agogo. In my mind, the agogo was the simplest of the instruments available, but I completely lost myself in it.

I’m on the right in the grey shirt. The fact that there are people playing capoeira in this picture and I’m STILL the blurriest thing in it should tell you how hard I was jamming on that agogo.

Toward the end, the roda closed tighter and tighter as the tempo increased and the whole thing came to a sudden stop. I still wanted to play music, so I asked permission to play the atabaque and the pandeiro. Mestre Sapoti obliged, and he started teaching me rhythms on both instruments. Next thing I knew, he was passing out sticks and teaching us maculelê.

There was such positive energy throughout the entire process, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn to play music on this trip, even if it is just a few basic rhythms. From what I heard, my classmates had just as much fun. Hopefully we’ll get another shot at capoeira before we leave.