Atlanta capoeira students discuss cultural impact and finding community in martial arts

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Students Nicole "Alta" Cooper (left) and Megan "Soneca" Kazanski practice the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira in Atlanta.

Credit: Allexa Ceballos/GPB News

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Ricky "Professor Malandro" Lawson gives instruction to his students in the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira in Atlanta.

Credit: Allexa Ceballos/GPB News

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Students practice the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira at Filhos de Bimba, a capoeira school in Atlanta.

Credit: Allexa Ceballos/GPB News

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Students practice the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira at Filhos de Bimba, a capoeira school in Atlanta.

Credit: Allexa Ceballos/GPB News

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Student Ruth Evans (left) practices the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira with Ayse "Axé" Gul Gungor (right) at Filhos de Bimba, a capoeira school in Atlanta.

Credit: Allexa Ceballos/GPB News

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art originally created by enslaved Africans as a method of self-defense. Disguised as dance, it’s a combination of kicks, dodges and acrobatics, all frequently accompanied by music.

Here in Atlanta, Filhos de Bimba is one of the few schools teaching the martial art and sharing the culture from which it comes.

Ricky Lawson, known in the capoeira community as Professor Malandro, leads the school. He said that earning a “nome de guerra” or "warrior name" in capoeira is a rite of passage.

“Everyone eventually, over time, will receive a nickname that expresses the way they move, what they like to do," Lawson said, "something that they'll be proud of.”

Recently, 10-year-old Malachi Henderson earned his name "Tanquinho" or "Little Tank." Henderson said video games are what drew him to the martial art.

“At my church, we had a Tekken tournament, and my character is Eddie Gordo, and he does capoeira,” he said. “So I begged my parents to find, like, a capoeira class, and then they found this one.”

Filhos de Bimba gets its name from Manuel dos Reis Machado, who is known in the capoeira world as Mestre Bimba. The capoeira master is credited with preserving and restoring the martial art when it was prohibited under Brazilian law in the early 20th century.

At that time, Lawson said, capoeira was on the verge of extinction.

“Mestre Bimba, who [was] Black, who was poor, who was illiterate, was able to take this form of expression — this art form that was being persecuted by law — and now it's a part of Brazil's nationality and practiced in every single continent,” he said.

Students at the school learn this history through songs in Brazilian Portuguese and play traditional African instruments like the stringed berimbau and the pandeiro, similar to a tambourine.

Ruth Evans has been training at Filhos de Bimba for three months and said connecting with the history of capoeira feels special.

“It isn't just learning the history and the culture in a cognitive way of like, 'Hey, let me teach you something about the stories,'” Evans said. "There's an embodiment to living out some of those cultural principles in the group itself."

Filhos de Bimba was founded in Brazil in 1986 after the death of Mestre Bimba, by his son Manoel Nascimento Machado, who’s known as Mestre Nenel. Since then, FDB schools have opened up across North America, South America and in Europe.