“Mestre Bimba”

The legacy of Mestre Bimba is that he created capoeira for the world

Mestre Bimba almost single-handedly pulled Capoeira from a lowly-regarded street fight of thugs in the eyes of Brazil's government and empowered people up to a respected martial art form with new moves, an emphasis on athleticism, and - another important first for Capoeira - a rigorous and planned teaching method. The style he created is known as Capoeira Regional.

Manoel dos Reis Machado is said to have had two birth certificates, one dated 1899 and and another from 1900. 1900 is the date most commonly used.

The son of Luiz Cândido Machado and Maria Martinha do Bonfim, Manuel dos Reis Machado was born in the Bairro do Engenho Velho de Brotas, Salvador. His nickname, "Bimba," is 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 said... it's a boy, look at his bimbinha (male sexual organ in Bahia).  And a legend was, literally, born!

Bimba started learning capoeira when he was 12 years old -- even though in those days capoeira was still being persecuted by the authorities -- with a Capitao da Compania Bahiana de Navegacao named Bentinho from Estrada das Boiadas (presently known as Bairro da Liberdade) in Salvador.   He [Bimba] would later be known as one of the legendary founding fathers of contemporary capoeira.

At the age of 18, Bimba felt that capoeira had lost its entire efficacy as a martial art and an instrument of resistance, and had become simply a “folkloric” activity reduced to nine movements. He made it his mission to restore movements from the traditional capoeira fights and also added movements from another African fighting style called Batuque* (of which his father was a champion). To these, he created and introduced additional movements he felt would expand capoeira’s usefulness.

This was the beginning capoeira Regional as we know it today.  The timeline that followed – and a quick growth, was as follows:

·       In 1930 the ban on capoeira ended,

·       In 1932, Mestre Bimba founded the first capoeira school, Academia-Escola de Cultura Regional, at the Engenho Velho de Brotas. Previously, capoeira was practiced and played only on the streets.

·       In 1936, Mestre Bimba challenged fighters of any martial art style to test his capoeira style. He had four matches, Bimba won all matches.

·       In 1937, he was invited to demonstrate capoeira to then President of Brazil where he earned the certificate of education from the state board of education.

·       In 1942, Mestre Bimba opened his second capoeira school at the Terreiro de Jesus at the Rua das Laranjeiras. The school still open today.

Mestre Bimba believed that capoeira had value as another, unique form of self defense and instilled many of the structure and methodologies typically present in martial arts.  Many of these practices are still an important of capoeria schools today, including the white uniform.  For example, the traditional white uniform we wear in class today comes from Mestre Bimba’s day when 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.

Mestre Bimba was a carpenter, warehouse man, longshoreman, and horse coach conductor, but mainly – and down to his soul – a capoeirista.

Unhappy with false promises and lack of support from local authorities in Bahia, he moved to Goiânia in 1973 at the invitation of a former student. He died a year later, on February 1974 in a hospital in Goiânia, due to a stroke

Bimba managed to recover the original values within capoeira, which were used among the black slaves centuries before him. For Bimba, capoeira was a fight but "competition" should be permanently avoided since he believed it was a "cooperation" fight, where the stronger player was always responsible for the weaker player and helped him to excel in his own fighting techniques.

 “Mestre Bimba fought all his life for what he strongly believed was best for capoeira and succeeded.”

*Batuque is a brutal fighting “game” (no longer played) in which one player stands in the center of a circle and another moves around him, suddenly attacking. The attacking player tries to throw the defending player to the ground with blows from his legs