Learning Capoeira

<em>Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art</em> is a provocative look at capoeira a demanding acrobatic art that combines dance ritual music and fighting style. First created by slaves freedmen and gang members capoeira is a study in contrasts that integrates African-descended rhythms and flowing dance steps with hard lessons from the street. According to veteran teachers capoeira will transform novices instilling in them a sense of <em>malicia</em> or cunning and changing how they walk hear and interact. <br> <em>Learning Capoeira</em> is an ethnographic study based on author Greg Downey's extensive research about capoeira and more than ten years of apprenticeship. It looks at lessons from traditional capoeira teachers in Salvador Brazil capturing the spoken and unspoken ways in which they pass on the art to future generations. Downey explores how bodily training can affect players' perceptions and social interactions both within the circular <em>roda</em> the ring where the game takes place as well as outside it in their daily lives. He brings together an experience-centered phenomenological analysis of the art with recent discoveries in psychology and the neurosciences about the effects of physical education on perception. The text is enhanced by more than twenty photos of capoeira sessions many taken by veteran teacher Mestre Cobra Mansa. <br> <em>Learning Capoeira</em> breaks from many contemporary trends in cultural studies of all sorts looking at practice education music nonverbal communication perception and interaction. It will be of interest to students of African Diaspora culture performance sport and anthropology. For anyone who has wondered how physical training affects our perceptions this close study of capoeira will open new avenues for understanding how culture shapes the ways we carry ourselves and see the world.