I consider myself a bit of a capoeira purist, so I raised a suspicious eyebrow when I saw that a rap song about the Afro-Brazilian martial art had been posted to YouTube and is making the rounds on Facebook. So much could go terribly wrong!
But this comes together quite nicely — and even uses rhythms that evoke real capoeira music. Related to this film, which I’ve yet to check out.
Love this capoeira-inspired dance sequence. Sorry for the product placement. Don’t drink Red Bull. Or do, I don’t care — just remember that axé comes from the heart, not an energy drink.
After reading this great little piece over at louder than swahili, I couldn’t resist posting this clip of me in a spontaneous dance-off at a Luhya wedding in Nairobi in December. We were all dancing in a group, then all of a sudden this guy came up to me and the crowd parted, and it was on.
I’ve always thought I could boogie when I needed to — I even got dubbed “Lil’ Turbo” as a four year-old by a band of roving breakdancers who stopped by hippie San Francisco preschool Rocky Mountain in 1985. But this clip definitively proves I am less of a dancer in real life than I am in my head. Continue reading
I think I found my calling. Capoeira in Northern Uganda.
OK, don’t freak out. I’m not advocating a Brazilian-martial-arts-based holy war on infidels here. Jihad simply means “struggle” in Arabic and carries no inherent connotation of religion or violence. If you don’t know what capoeira is, please read the Wikipedia entry.
Capoeira Jihad is a concept I came up with last year when I was really getting into capoeira, training four to five times a week. I also happened to be taking an extremely time-consuming Arabic class at Columbia. Continue reading
Eamon Kircher-Allen 