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Who is Mestre Bimba?
The origin of Capoeira Regional.
The impact and consequences of the creation of Capoeira Regional.
Manoel dos Reis Machado - Mestre Bimba - was born in 1899 in Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil and pretty soon he would hold a crucial role in the world of Capoeira. He started learning Capoeira when he was 12 years old, with a Navigation Captain from Salvador called Bentinho , even though, in those days, Capoeira was still being persecuted by the authorities.
At 18, Bimba felt that Capoeira had lost all its efficiency as a martial art and resistance, becoming a folkloric activity, reduced to nine movements. It was then that Bimba started to retrieve movements from the original Capoeira fights and added movements from another African fight called Batuque , of which his father was a champion, as well as introducing movements created by himself. This was the beginning of the creation of Capoeira Regional.
In 1928, this process was concluded and a new chapter in the history of Capoeira begun, as well as a change in the way Black people were looked upon by the Brazilian society. In 1937, Bimba finally managed to register the first Capoeira academy in Brazil , which was called Luta Regional Bahiana (Bahian Regional Fight), removing Capoeira from the streets and thus improving its image in the eyes of the Brazilian society. Bimba argued that Capoeira should not be practiced on the streets and that the people who played it should not be seen as folkloric representations but, instead, martial art fighters.
Bimba managed to recover the original values within Capoeira, which were used amongst the Black slaves centuries before him. For Bimba, Capoeira was a fight but “competition” should be permanently avoided since he believed it was a “cooperation” fight, where the stronger player was always responsible for the weaker player and helped him to excel in his own fighting techniques.
