A beautiful fight : the racial politics of Capoeira in Backland Bahia / Esther Viola Kurtz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kurtz, Esther Viola, 1976- author.

Series:

Music and social justice

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capoeira (Dance)--Anthropological aspects.

Capoeira (Dance).

Capoeira (Dance)--Brazil--Bahia (State)--History.

Capoeira (Dance)--Political aspects--Brazil--Bahia (State).

Martial arts--Brazil--Bahia (State)--History.

Martial arts.

Slavery--Brazil--History--19th century.

Slavery.

Racism--Brazil--Bahia (State)--History.

Racism.

Cultural appropriation--Brazil.

Cultural appropriation.

Capoeira (Dance)--Social aspects.

Capoeira (Dance)--History.

Martial arts--History.

Racism--History.

Slavery--History.

Brazil.

Physical Description:

217 pages : illustrations, music ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Racial politics of Capoeira in Backland Bahia

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2025.

Summary:

"A Beautiful Fight examines the potentials and limits of capoeira Angola to cohere a multiracial community committed to antiracist struggle. Capoeira, a musical fight-game that originated among enslaved Africans in Brazil, holds special significance for Black Brazilian activists as a spiritual and political practice that affirms the value of Black lives, thus countering anti-Black violence sanctioned by the Brazilian state. However, many capoeira groups count more white practitioners than Black, especially groups of the politicized, Afrocentric style called capoeira Angola, raising debates about appropriation of Black culture that resonate across the Americas. A Beautiful Fight addresses these tensions and examines the potentials and limits for capoeira Angola to cultivate a diverse community allied in antiracist action. Drawing on ethnographic research with a multiracial capoeira Angola group in Brazil's Bahian sertão or backlands, Esther Viola Kurtz explores diverse group members' understandings of capoeira's spiritual and political meanings and considers how white participation impacts capoeira's antiracist politics. A Beautiful Fight argues that white practitioners occupying space in capoeira divert attention from Black members' concerns and reproduce racist and colonialist ideologies, albeit unintentionally. In this way, the book complicates claims that shared music and dance bridge differences and facilitate cross-racial unity, yet Kurtz proposes that capoeira still transmits knowledge and tools that, when used with intention and care, can be leveraged to collaboratively contest racism and imagine a more just world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Sensing Axé: Sound, Movement, and Commitment in the African Matrix

Accessing Ancestralidade: Spiritual Memory and Embodied Fabulation

Consuming Bahia: The Politics of White Participation

Playing with Money and Mandinga

Epilogue.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-207) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Kurtz, Esther Viola, 1976- Beautiful fight

ISBN:

9780472077540

0472077546

9780472057542

0472057545

OCLC:

1453071557

Publisher Number:

90102390970

CIPO000251768