Manuel dos Reis Machado

Manuel dos Reis Machado, commonly called Mestre Bimba (; November 23, 1900 – February 5, 1974), was a Brazilian capoeira mestre and the founder of the capoeira regional style. Bimba was one of the best capoeiristas of his time, undefeated in numerous public challenges against fighters from various martial arts.

Bimba came from capoeira Angola, and taught Angola style. He reformed capoeira primarily in response to Burlamaqui and Sinhôzinho's attempts to strip it of music and African traditions, and transform it into a mere set of bodily techniques. On the other hand, he was unsatisfied with capoeira Angola of his time, because of its emphasis on rituals and ineffective kicks.

Bimba encouraged adding new kicks to capoeira, as long as they were effective and incorporated into the basic footwork, ginga. In declaration of his style in 1936, Bimba claimed to have subtracted two and added 15 kicks to traditional capoeira. Later, this number rose to 52 techniques from various arts. Martelo and queixada kicks, introduced by Bimba, became hallmarks of the Regional style.

Sequences of predetermined movements as a teaching method was one of the major innovations of Bimba. Another key innovations was teaching capoeira to a broader audience, which helped spread the art to different social groups and ultimately contributed to its decriminalization.

Bimba was also an excellent singer and berimbau player.

Early life

Manoel dos Reis Machado was born on 23 November 1900 (according to Assunção) or 1899 (according to Almeida) in the neighbourhood of Engenho Velho, in Salvador.

The son of Luiz Cândido Machado and Maria Martinha do Bonfim, Machado was born at the Bairro do Engenho Velho, Salvador. The nickname "Bimba", whose literal meaning was "phallus", came up as a result of a bet between his mother and the midwife during his birth. His mother bet that he was going to be a girl and the midwife bet he would be a boy; after he was delivered, the midwife revealed that he was a boy by pointing between his legs at his bimba. In the context of Brazil, "Bimba" also meant "beating".

He worked as a carpenter, dockworker, and day laborer. He started learning capoeira when he was 12 years old, with an African boat commander called Bentinho. He had previously learned techniques of batuque, a related fighting-dance, from his fater, Luis Cândido Machado. As a young man, he had the nickname Três Pancadas, meaning "three blows", because this was said to be the number of his punches necessary to knock down an opponent.

Birth of the regional style

At 18, Bimba felt that capoeira had lost all its efficacy as a martial art and an instrument of resistance, becoming a folkloric activity reduced to nine movements. It was then that Bimba started to restore movements from the old capoeira (later known as Angola), added movements from an extinct African fighting style called batuque – a type of martial art that he learned from his father (of which his father was a champion), as well as introducing movements created by himself. Bimba was the first to create a method of teaching to help facilitate learning because, until then, capoeira was only learned by watching and participating in the roda.

It also has been theorized that Bimba received influence by other martial arts when adding and perfecting movements to the capoeira repertoire. He is known to have studied the method of capoeira teachers like Mestre Sinhozinho, Mario Aleixo and Anibal "Zuma" Burlamaqui, Other sources, among them Mestre Itapoan, believe that Bimba made virtually no additions from other martial arts to capoeira, and that all its movements came from batuque or itself; moreover, there are reports of capoeira techniques similar to those from judo as far back as 1888, before Eastern martial arts came to Brazil. This was called the Academia-escola de Cultura Regional, at the Engenho de Brotas in Salvador, Bahia. Previously, capoeira was only practiced and played on the streets. However, capoeira was still heavily discriminated against by upper-class Brazilian society. In order to change the pejorative reputation of capoeira and its practitioners as devious, stealthy and malicious, Bimba set new standards to the art.

His students had to wear a clean, white uniform, show proof of grade proficiency from school, exercise discipline, show good posture and many other standards. As a result, doctors, lawyers, politicians, upper-middle-class people, and women (until then excluded) started to join his school, providing Bimba with legitimacy and support. Bimba was not completely against accepting exceptionally poor students, but only when they showed talent or attitude.

It's also known that Bimba tested his new students putting them in a strong gravata or neck lock for three minutes, only accepting them in his school if they endured said time without tapping out. However, after the entrance of his apprentice Cisnando Lima, he changed the initiation test to a demonstration of flexibility and a written examination. The newspaper A Tarde covered the incident under the title of "It's not easy to catch a capoeirista! He defended himself using cabeçadas and rabos de arraia" ("Não é fácil pegar um capoeirista... Livrou-se da agressão com cabeçadas e rabos de arraia").

Bimba's Capoeira Regional academy was geographically near Mestre Pastinha's Capoeira Angola school. While it is known that the two mestres respected each other and never talked bad about the other's school, according to mestres Atenilo and Itapoan, Bimba sometimes instructed his students to hit and injure Pastinha's in shared rodas.

In 1942, Machado opened his second school at the Terreiro de Jesus on Rua das Laranjeiras. The school is still open today and was supervised by his former student, "Vermelho" until the early 1980s. The school then came under the brief supervision of Mestre Almiro, before being transferred to Mestre Bamba; the man who leads the school today. He also taught capoeira to the army and at the police academy. He was then considered "the father of modern capoeira".

In 1945, Bimba and his students were challenged by Jayme Ferreira, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor trained by the Gracie family, who accused regional capoeiristas of avoiding fights. Bimba answered by saying capoeira regional was for self-defense, not for fighting under sport rules. During this tour, they received two challenges to fight for real (pra valer), one by Brazilian catch wrestlers led by Piragibe and another one by capoeira carioca leader Mestre Sinhozinho.

Academy rules

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Bimba strongly believed capoeira had an extraordinary value as a self-defense martial art, hence his efforts to develop its learning in a structured and methodical way.

Bimba developed a capoeira teaching method with commandments, principles and traditions, which are still part of the capoeira regional up to this day. Some of his commandments are:

To stop smoking and drinking since it interferes with the players' performance
Avoid demonstrating your progress to your friends outside the capoeira roda. Remember that surprise is your best ally in a fight
Avoid conversation during training, instead observe and learn from watching
Always ginga
Practice daily the basic fundamentals
Keep your body relaxed
It is better to get "caught" in the roda than on the streets
Don't be afraid to get close to the opponent. The closer you stay, the better you will learn
Students must maintain good grades in school or be employed

Bimba also established his own capoeira principles as the basis for his capoeira teaching method:

Gingar sempre (to keep oneself in constant movement when fighting); ginga is the capoeira basic movement
Esquivar sempre (to dodge away from the opponent's attacks)
All movements must have a purpose (attack and corresponding defense movement)
Preserve a constant fixed position on the ground (acrobatic jumps makes one vulnerable)
Play according to the rhythm determined by the berimbau (capoeira musical instrument)
Always play close to your partner
Respect a player when he/she can no longer defend an attack movement
Protect the opponent's physical and moral integrity (during the practice, the stronger will protect the weaker player)

Consequently, Bimba created several traditions and rituals to support his methodology:

A chair was used in order to train beginner students/players
The charanga is the capoeira orchestra, composed by a berimbau and two pandeiros
The singing (quadras e corridos), songs composed by Bimba to accompany the game
The batizado (baptism), the first time the student plays capoeira at the sound of berimbau

The aspects that still makes capoeira regional unique is its method:

Admission exam (physical test made with capoeira movements to identify students' abilities)
The sequência (sequence) of the basic 17 capoeira attack and defence movements
Practice of the different rhythms of the game
Specific movements: traumatizing, projection, connected and unbalancing
Practice of cintura desprezada (second sequence practice by advanced students)
Formatura (capoeira teacher graduation)
Especialização and emboscada (specific advanced exams)

To celebrate his 119th birthday, Google released a Google Doodle commemorating him.

In popular culture

Mestre Bimba: A Capoeira Illuminada (2006) is a documentary about Mestre Bimba and Capoeira.

Literature

Wesolowski, Katya (2023). Capoeira Connections: A Memoir in Motion. University of Florida Press. ISBN 978-1-68340-320-3.

References

External links

Official Blog of the Fundação Mestre Bimba
Documentary, Mestre Bimba: A Capoeira Illuminada (2006)