New claims on capoeira and breaking: the Barros de Castro interview

Jelon Vieira and Loremil Machado: New York 1980 (Image by Warrington Hudlin)

Image from Warrington Hudlin's 1980 film, viewable at the Internet Archive.

The following material is from an interview of Mestre Jelon Vieira conducted by Prof. Mauricio Barros de Castro of  the Rio de Janeiro State University for his 2007 PhD dissertation, Na roda do mundo mestre João Grande entre a Bahia e Nova York.

  Part of the interview was excerpted in his 2010 book Mestre João Grande : na roda do mundo.  The longer excerpts featured below are from the 2009 book Capoeira: Encontros Rio de Janeiro : Beco do Azougue Editorial

The English translation was done by a Brazilian living in New York that I hired through the website Upwork. My knowledge of Portuguese is non-existent, so I would welcome corrections and clarifications.  The one edit I made is to correct the phrase "Peão de cabeça" or "head pawn" to "Pião de cabeça" or "head spin."  If "Peão" is a variant used in capoeira, or a regional dialect form, please let me know.

Capoeira: Encontros/ Mauricio Barros de Castro (2009)

Is there any relation of capoeira with some African American forms of New York, is there a lot of influence of capoeira, for example, in the street dance, in the break dance?

The New York Times published an article giving me credit for being the father of break dancing, which is not true. When I first arrived here in New York I did a lot of work at the public schools. I frequently went to the Bronx and before break dancing was considered a style of dancing, or was successful, there wasn’t even music involved at that time. I used to see boys break dancing their breaks at school, in the streets and on the street corners, mainly during the summer. This was in 1975 and these boys, from the public schools, sometimes participated and began to be introduced to capoeira. They started to bring movements from capoeira into break dancing, such as the “[pião] de cabeça” or “head [spin]”. Loremil used to execute the “head [spin]” very well. Nowadays, the break dancers spin with their heads upside down better than a capoeira dancer. There are two different goals in capoeira; fighting and dancing, whereas for break dancing there is only dancing. So, both Loremil and myself, with our presence here influenced them to bring movements from capoeira to break dancing. Although people say that we were the creators of break dancing, we actually influenced break dancers while this movement was growing. In the same way, the movement of capoeira was influenced by a famous dancer named “Crazy Leg”. He was giving an interview on TV when he mentioned my name and by coincidence, I was watching. He put a lot of effort in training and took capoeira classes with me before developing his own style in break dancing.

Capoeira: Encontros/ Mauricio Barros de Castro

And how were these public school classes? How did this happen?

It was like a show, a lecture. At that time, we did not speak English, so there was a person who translated everything for us. Loremil and I, both with our berimbau, would put a vinyl record on because there was no one to play for us while we were showing the boys capoeira. They were crazy about it. After each show, everybody wanted to talk to us and invited us to their break dancing circles. At that time, break dancing was totally different than it is today. It was more of a cultural movement than a commercial thing, and it also had  identification and styles within each neighborhood.

But how did you get to these public schools?

We got through to the schools through an organization called Art Connection. They bring artists to public schools. One of the principals at the public school watched Loremil and my show and she thought that it would be interesting if the students got an opportunity to learn capoeira, especially in neighborhoods there the majority of students were African American and Latino.