ABSTRACT
From the 1930s onwards capoeira underwent major changes, largely due to the actions of some outstanding individuals such as Mestres Bimba and Pastinha. To understand these transformations, which can be subsumed under the label of modernization, they need to be placed in the context not only of Brazil, AfroBrazilian culture and the Black Atlantic, but also within the wider field of martial arts. Manoel dos Reis Machado, or Mestre Bimba (1900-1974), belongs to a generation of black men and women who projected their art to the foreground of Western culture in the 1920s and 1930s. In Bimba’s particular case, though, the impact of his work on an international scale was delayed by almost half a century.
