Interview with the master of capoeira Rosangela Costa Araujo. Master Janja



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Photo taken by Valéria Barbosa at the XIII AWID Forum. Wheel of Capoeira Angola. Master Janja in charge of Capoeira.

SPEAK, WOMAN!



By: Valéria Barbosa.



I had a brief interview with Mrs. Rosangela Costa Araujo, Master Janja. Master of Capoeira.



This audio. I had to transcribe it, listen, and listen, and discover magical moments of this story. These that happen in people's lives by gifts. This gift I won from World Pulse, when I participated in the invitation of the 13th Forum of AWID, in Costa do Sauipe.



I there in Salvador - Bahia ... Here in Brazil and in a Forum.



I was impressed and delighted with various events and especially with an orchestra of Berimbaus, I remembered my maestro Claudecir Francisco, sang several songs of angola; African rhythm of the Banto tribe, and I watch a beautiful capoeira roda of Master Janja, me and more than 2,000 women, together seeing the beauty of this work.



The next day in one of the corridors I sat by his side by chance.



Excuse me, and without any agenda, just the intuition and curiosity of a community communication person trained by World Pulse, I ask you to interview her.



I get a preciousness in audio, which I arranged and transformed in this video and in this simple translation made using Google.



Mestre Janja - Come on! I have the civil registry of Rosangela Costa Araujo.



I'm Janja! I'm a Capoeirista. Professor at the Federal University of Bahia, Department of Gender and Feminism.



Valéria. How long have you worked with Capoeira?



Mestre Janja - It's ... Thirty-four. I've been thirty-four years old. I've been in capoeira for thirty-four years.



Valéria- Where do you develop your work?



Mestre Janja - Good. I started my training in Capoeira right here in Salvador, 16 years later I moved to São Paulo, when I went to study, to do Postgraduate, and there I founded a Capoeira Organization that is the first organization in the world Of Capoeira founded by a woman. And today this Organization has nuclei, here in Brazil: São Paulo, Brasília, Salvador and also outside Brazil; right Germany, Japan, Colombia, finally eight countries have been developing work based on two pillars, which are: capoeira as an instrument to fight racism and sexism.



Valéria- How important is it in a woman's life to exercise capoeira, to be initiated in capoeira?



Mestre Janja- The first thing is to say that capoeira is fantastic, who enters it, enters by enchantment, by seduction, and that although historically it is a corporal practice linked to the universe of the men, the last four decades they have promoted a radical change in this scene, and This change is also accompanied by the process of globalization of capoeira. So today we know that several countries, we have, even as Germany and Denmark a number of women if not equal it is higher than the number of men practicing.



So, the importance of this will vary from the overcoming of essentialism over the female body, they say that the woman is weak, that, is not turned to these universes that although it is not exclusively a fight the capoeira, but is also fight, it enters Obviously subalternized way, but right there in that she will learn to break with these forms of subalternizations and take capoeira for herself as an instrument of her own choosing to validate her political projects. In our case it is exactly this, capoeira as an instrument of struggle for the promotion of a more equanimous society, less with sharper, less unequal abysses.



Valéria - I've been watching you yesterday, ruling as if it were a classical masterpiece, a Berimbaus orchestra, do you have musical initiation?



Or is it even born of the capoeira itself, letting its body speak?



Mestre Janja - Well. I even think I'm a Classical master, what I was doing yesterday is the capoeira classic. More jokes aside.



No, I do not have. If you ask me to give you a musical note, I'm going to have to ask you where it is and how to do it?



I have no training in music. I had good Masters, who among other things understood that the universe of capoeira, the musical universe of capoeira, is as important as the corporeal universe.



So the training for that field, which is the mix of instrumentation and singing, it does not enter our training as a secondary element, it is as important as you know everything that is done with the body inside the capoeira.



So that's what capoeira is, the art of simulation from the point of view of our place in the world. We are exactly the no place, or between place; Because we fight, but we are not fighters, we dance we are not dancers, we sing we are not singers, we play we are not instrumentalists.



So this is what makes us a capoeirista, and to be able to join in a single body all these elements to qualify this being capoeirista, being in the world like capoeirista.



Then a Berimbaus orchestra began with a play to stimulate not only the development of learning the specific instrument that is the berimbau, but above all to stimulate also the creativity and the possibility of the berimbau to interpret other cultural universes of African matrix.



And we worked specifically with the Banto world, with the references Banto of African culture in Brazil, and that we could also do the interpretation through the berimbau of these other universes.



Then we play Frevo, we play Maracatu, we play all this from the berimbau.



Valéria - Thank you very much.









How to Get Involved



 





Women can get involved by knowing a little about this work and learning that work related to the empowerment of women, using the culture of the place to discuss different subjects of issues that emerge from the feminine daily life, such as gender violence, knowledge of the body, Cheers. Among many other topics.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6zL3ZHzAtQ

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