Reddit mentions of Capoeira (Sport in the Global Society)

I've trained for about 6 years. Am not in Brazil but I'm planning to visit and stay there for at decent period of time.

My expertise is as a student of the art, from my experience of studying the art, discussion with Mestres of different capoeira schools and philosophy, as well as studying books and secondary historical sources (I recommend this this book)

To put it in context, let me explain to you a brief history of pre-academy capoeira as well as broad categories of capoeira styles that exists to day.

As we know, before Mestre Bimba created his school, capoeira was forbidden (that's why he first school's name did not have the word capoeira in it). Mestre Bimba thought that capoeira at that time was not effective, therefore he added some moves from other martial arts and created the first capoeira training system. Before this, capoeristas would just learn by imitation and playing in the roda (pronounced ho-dah).

As Bimba's style became more popular, the traditional style of capoeira became less and less so. Mestre Pastinha created his school and they called the traditional style Capoeira Angola. Today, the term is (somewhat problematically) used to describe any style that is considered traditional and not under Mestre Bimba.

Another term that you will come across is Capoeira Contemporanea, which just means comtemparary capoeira and is used to describe any styles that don't fall under Regional or Angola)

Capoeira Angola today is more ritualistic and focuses more on cleverness and tricks. The moves are (in general) more dance-like and hey (generally) play lower to the ground.

The style in the video is more towards a modern Regional style that focuses on martial effectiveness, speed, and objectivity.

There's also a style that emerged in São Paolo that merges both the styles. A famous group among is my group (CDO) that is today famous for acrobatics, lack of a backbone, and versatility.

Each different style generally has good reasoning for why they do things a particular way. The main problem with portraying capoeira as a fight is that even the most aggressive, objective groups generally still "play". While a capoeira game can degenerate into a fight, that is rarely a desired outcome, fueled usually by ego or some personal beef.

The old capoeristas used to call capoeira vadiaçao, which loosely translated means vagrancy, or in other words, just wasting time and hanging out.

That is why a capoeira game is inherently more than a fight, because there is a lot of things outside of martial ability to consider.

Ok, so if you are interested in some real capoeira history, this is one of the best books on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Capoeira-History-Afro-Brazilian-Martial-Society/dp/0714680869