http://memory.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200003824/full.html
This is library film footage shot in 1936 by Katherine Dunham, a dance researcher. It shows the Martinequese MA/dance/ritual of l’agya, also known as ladja and as danmye, which is still practiced today. Interesting combination of contact acrobatic kicks and some wrestling throws, and very interesting to compare this to modern Brazilian capoeira.
Strange. I dont know if its because of the film that the kicks look fast. And also without the beat, they kinda seem to be spazzing out.
I do see the similarity.Strange.
Is it possible that both styles are originally from the same source?A mother style if you will.
I’d say it’s highly likely that ladya/danmye and capoeira are related - not necessarily by a single parent style, because many African cultures included acrobatic kicking styles. When France started to colonize continental Africa during the 1800s, they started to produce pictures of African warriors performing capoeira-like kicking techniques.
Academic theses by Dr. Thomas Desch-Obi and Dr. Robert Farris Thompson have both convincingly shown how traditional African MAs/combat dances/rituals were spread throughout the Americas and the Caribbean via the slave trade.
Forgive my ignorance; but what, aside from the name and location, are the significant differences between ladya and caoeira?
To my uneducated eye these styles appear almost identical. I have seen images of African warriors performing “kicking” techniques - jumping two-footed, but never anything that so closely resembles capoeira.
Some of the musical instruments, ritual aspects and terminologies are different; I don’t know enough about danmye technique to comment on that, except that it seems to emphasize throwing techniques more than do either Angola or modern Regional style capoeira.
There’s a summary of danmye available in English at http://www.european-schoolprojects.net/festivals/Martinique/danmye/danmye_e.htm#historique
and some more, in French, at http://membres.lycos.fr/jla/ledanmye.htm
Thank you for that. Sadly my french is not what it should be so I’ll refer only to the link to the article written in English.
Given the inclusion of music, non-contact “The strokes must be restrained and given without intending to hit” and the dance elements, thiis to the unitiated (me) would appear to be Capoeira. The similarity is referenced in the article “It acts as an incentive on the wrestlers as in Capoeira (Brazil).” when discussing the purpose of percussion.
If the only significant difference is the inclusion of grappling, does that suggest that perhaps Capoeira may have lost part of its art? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to explore the hypothesis that these two arts share similar/the same roots. Could, then,
Damnye have an additional root that incorporates grappling? Or could grappling have been lost by Capoeira?
Maybe our Capoeiraists on the forum may be able to point us in the direction of references or instances of grappling in their art?
In capoeira, contact levels depend on the whys and wheres of the individual game. I’ve seen video footage of capoeira games in Rio that resemble kickboxing with more evasions than punches, played at full speed and with full contact. Likewise, the ladya/danmye footage is clearly a contact fight, and I’ve read of danmye matches in which fighters were badly hurt. I assume that the description on the English language page I referenced earlier refers to a milder version.
Re. capoeira throws, I know that mestre Bimba (who essentially created capoeira Regional) added a series of acrobatic throws as an exercise/display element - they are shown at http://www.gowiththeflow.nl/library/mestrebimba.html . Likewise, contact capoeira games do include leg sweeps, shoulder and back lifts applied as leverage throws against kicks, etc.
Great find. Thanks!
Talking about the loss of grappling in Capoeira, Capoeiristas of the era just before it’s legalisation and systemization (pre-1930s) commonly used bladed weapons. There’s no point trying to grab someone who’s adept at using a blade! At least this is what I read in Mestre Cobrinha Verde’s book (Mestre Cobrinha Verde was a student of Besouro Manganga, a turn of the 20th Century Capoeira master, widely accepted as the greatest Capoeira player Bahia ever produced). Throws came back into Capoeira with the creation of Mestre Bimba’s Regional, which combined Capoeira with Batuque, a now extinct Afro-Brazilian martial art whose object was to throw or kick the opponent out of the circle.
I thought that Capoeira was developed by slaves and designed to be used while one’s hands and/or feet were shackled? If so, it would make sense that there is no grappling in the art.
Capoeira was developed in africa by the Bantu peoples of the Congo. It was manifested as the ngolo (hence capoeira angola), a type of ritual fighting game. Aspects of ngolo in Brazil became capoeira.
As far as blades go, capoeira came before blades, and blades had nothing to do with capoeira, just with gang violence. The gangs (we’re talking about Rio here) used, among other things, blades, but were also associated with capoeira, a much more pervasive cultural expression among blacks.
Throws exist in capoeira, but the use of hands is very minimized and so throws with the hands are equally rare. There was never grappling inherent in capoeira, except perhaps as a shortlived limited regional thing used by some people. Again, nothing really to do with capoeira itself. The aesthetic of open hands refers to a congolese saying: “the hands are for creating, the feet for destroying”.
Nice find. I just added it to youtube for posterity 
THAT WAS TOTALLY COOL!!! WAY COOL!!
Can you
Thanks again!
Ag’ya and capoeira share similar roots. Many African combat styles blended because of lack of language. However, besides capoeira, scant have survived. My headmaster, Mestre Jelon, is currently studying the African roots of capoeira. His research has pointed to other capoeira-analogs, one that is now extinct in Puerto Rico, another extinct analog in Cuba.
Looking, Ag’ya seems to lack the more rhythmic ginga motion that is the basis of capoeira. However, the floor attacks seems similar to floor techniques in capoeira, and I swore I saw a floor-to-upright kick that’s exactly like a kick called ‘martelo do sole’ which roughly means ‘hammer kick from the floor’.
Capoeira was designed to be fought with the whole body. There are hand strikes and foot strikes, knees and elbow strikes, takedowns and some grappling. For demonstration of skill, most jogas, or games, are played in white to show that we can do all this crazy acrobatic stuff and not get dirt on our clothes… holdover from playing capoeira on Sunday in church clothes…
The congolese saying may apply for angoleiros, but for Regional practioners, we have grapples, arm bars, and gallopontes (sp?) as well as the the kicks and esquivas. Capoeira Carioca taught straight-razor, club, and cane combat.
DdlR - this is really great stuff. I have been reseraching on the net for a while now but Im finding it very hard to establish a dialogue with someone in Martinique who knows about Danmye/ Ladja. None of the sites I have found have contact info.
Can you help me out here? FYI I run the Capoeira Science website.
Thanks, C.
[quote=Mago]Ag’ya and capoeira share similar roots. Many African combat styles blended because of lack of language. However, besides capoeira, scant have survived. My headmaster, Mestre Jelon, is currently studying the African roots of capoeira. His research has pointed to other capoeira-analogs, one that is now extinct in Puerto Rico, another extinct analog in Cuba. [quote]
The root is from engolo (or sometimes just ngolo).
Armbars, throws, etc are jiujutsu and don’t have anything to do with capoeira. Capoeira crappling is I believe what some hear might call it. An attempt at Regional mestres wanting to look more hardcore? What ever the reason, it’s kind of stupid in the context of capoeira.
Find an online martinique newspaper and place an add. That would be the most direct route.
Bira Almeida says that capoeira and savate are related through chausson, and technically, it adds up – I can walk right into a capoeira class with almost no adjustment (though we do a lot less main au sol than they do, obviously, and the boxe francaise guys, as far as I know, don’t do any at all). A historical connection between all these arts would be a piece of cake, given that the Portuguese generally didn’t care much about race, and the french lower classes in southern france mixed regularly and easily with Africans on the other side of the Med and down the African coast. A common way of moving would easily be applied to its various local contexts in different ways. (And it’s politically incorrect to point out that a lot of Africans served on the slave ships… but I teach history, and I know better. Real history > ideology.)
Thanks for the clip.