The origin of engolo

There is no written record of engolo's origin. Engolo practitioners claim that "engolo comes from the ancestors"^[6] and that their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers played engolo.^[3]

Battle of Angolans and Portuguese, modern graphics.

According to Desch-Obi, engolo was likely developed by Bantu shamans and warriors in ancient Angola,^[18] based on the inverted worldview of kongo religion.^[19] With this worldview, shamans put themselves upside down to gain power from the ancestral realm.^[20] Among the Pende shamans, the most used movement was the front crescent kick.^[20] Masked shaman kicked over sacred medicine to activate it and over the kneeling people to heal them.^[20] Moreover, engolo was a military training method to develop warriors' close combat skills.^[12]

Neves e Sousa believes that the techniques of engolo derived from the way in which zebras fight among themselves. Desch-Obi finds that using the zebra as a combat role model in Angola makes sense because it symbolizes nimbleness and agile defense. The engolo also resembled the zebra's fighting style, particularly the zebra kicks executed with the palms touching the ground, which is a defining feature of engolo.^[9]

Matthew Zylstra suggests that a dance performed by the Gwikwe Bushmen bears a striking resemblance to the Angolan art. He proposes a theory that the Bantu peoples in southern Angola, who interacted with San Bushmen groups in the region, may have known such dances and integrated them into their cultures. If this theory holds, it would imply that the origins of engolo could be thousands of years old.^[2]

Engolo in Africa

Cunene Province in Angola

Negros in the cellar of a slave boat, by Johann Moritz Rugendas.

In precolonial Angola, mock combats were a major part of military training, and since hand-to-hand combat was essential to warfare, techniques to avoid blows and attacks were a key focus of martial exercises.^[21]

Since the Portuguese invasion in the 16th century, European chroniclers noted the martial skills of the local people. Mock combats were a common feature of military reviews in Kongo/Angola, similar to drills in Europe.^[21] These movements could be applied in warfare, as Angolan warriors heavily relied on personal maneuvers in their fighting technique.^[21] Written sources from the 16th century describe martial arts similar to capoeira.^[22] A Jesuit missionary in late 16th century described the abilities of the Ndongo warriors as follows:

They do not have defensive arms, all their defense rests in sanguar, which is to jump from one place to another with a thousand twists and such agility that they can dodge arrows and spears.^[23]

In the mid-17th century, Italian missionary Cavazzi also described the handstand technique of Angolan nganga:

In order to augment the reputation of his excellency, he frequently walks turned upside down, with his hands on the ground and his feet in the air.”^[20]

In 17th century, new military formation of kilombo, a fortified war camp surrounded by a wooden palisade, appeared among Imbangala warriors, which would soon be used in Brazil by freed Angolans.^[24] Angolan warriors mostly fought without shields, so evasion was essential to survive in missile and close combat. In the 19th century, Angolan warriors excelled in close combat techniques, surpassing Europeans.^[25]

In the early 20th century, Portuguese ethnographer Augusto Bastos documented a capoeira-like combat game in the Benguela district:

The Quilengues have an exercise, which they call ómudinhu. It consists in prodigious jumps in which they throw the legs into the air and the head downwards. It is accompanied by strong hand clapping.^[26]

In the 1950s, "n'golo dance" was first documented when the painter Neves e Sousa visited Mucope, in Cunene Province. In his drawings, young men in their prime can be seen performing inverted kicks and challenging acrobatic moves. His engolo drawings show many of the foundational capoeira moves, including the chapa de costas, rabo de arraia, scorpion, and cartwheel kick.^[27]

During the 1990s martial arts scholar Desch-Obi undertook field research in Angola, documenting engolo techniques.^[28] Around 2010, as a result of a research project, a documentary was made about engolo Jogo de Corpo. This time, all engolo players were elderly individuals who used only a basic set of kicks and sweeps, without demanding acrobatics. They stated that engolo had not been actively played since the 1970s because of Angolan Civil War (1975-2002), and that youth were no longer learning engolo.^[3]

Engolo in Americas

The Old Plantation, Angolan stick dance to banjo, South Carolina, 1780s

The art of engolo spread from Africa to the Americas, mainly among slaves taken from Angola and transported to the colonies via the Atlantic slave trade routes. The art has been maintained for centuries, and its traces have survived to this day among the African diaspora. It descendant arts include knocking and kicking in North America, danmyé in Martinique and capoeira in Brazil.^[6] Knocking and kicking was secretly practiced in the states of South Carolina and Virginia, during the times of slavery in the United States. Angolans were the predominant portion of the slaves in South Carolina.^[29] Gwaltney characterizes knocking and kicking as "the ancient martial art practiced by clergy among the enslaved and their followers."^[30] The "clergy" of the old African religion was known as nganga in Congo/Angola. These clandestine gatherings were often referred to as "drum meetings."^[30]

The danmyé or ladja is a martial art from Martinique that is similar to capoeira.^[31] The term danmyé likely came from the drumming technique danmyé, played during the combat.^[32] The art was influenced by various combat techniques from West and Central Africa, including West African wrestling, but the core kicking techniques comes from ngolo.^[31] In the 1930s Katherine Dunham filmed the ladja matches. In that time, wrestling was not the dominant technique of ladja, but kicks, many of them inverted, and a significant number of hand strikes from kokoyé.^[33]

Engolo in Brazil

San Salvador, Bahia, between 1822 and 1824, by Rugendas

Well, there is one thing that nobody doubts: the ones to teach capoeira to us were the negro slaves that were brought from Angola.^[34]

— Mestre Pastinha

From the 16th century, Portuguese colonists began capturing slaves from Angola and transporting them to Brazil. In 1617, they established a colony in Benguela. In 1627 and 1628, they conducted two significant military campaigns: one ventured towards the source of the Cunene River, and the other explored the central territories inhabited by the Cunene people.^[35]

Soon freed slaves started founding settlements in remote areas, calling them kilombo, meaning a war camp in the Kimbundu Bantu language.^[36] Portuguese sources mentioned that it took more than one dragoon to capture a quilombo warrior, as they defended themselves with a "strangely moving fighting technique".^[37] Some quilombos grew into independent states, with the largest, Quilombo dos Palmares, lasting nearly a century (1605-1694) as an African Kingdom in the Western Hemisphere.^[37]

One of the first records of inverted kicks in Brazil is from 18th-century Bahia. The Inquisition case reported of a free African named João, who had the ability to become "possessed" and communicate with the ancestors. To accomplish this, he would need to "walk on one foot, throwing the other one violently over his shoulder."^[38] By the mid-18th century, ngolo had spread to Rio de Janeiro and other cities.^[39] The term playing angola was also used for the art, where both angola and engolo actually came from the same Bantu word.^[8]

Any display of not only martial arts but mere acrobatics among Africans was forbidden.^[40] During the 1780s, a free negro in Rio was accused of "witchcraft" before the Inquisition. One indicator of his role as a witch doctor was his ability of hand walking.^[38] Due to repression, angola was forced to be passed down as secret knowledge.

As the end of the 18th century, the Angolan fighting technique in Brazil started to be called capoeira,^[41] named after the clearings in the forest where freed slaves resided and practice its skills.^[42]

Evolution to capoeira

Negroes fighting, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, c. 1824, by Augustus Earle.

During the 19th century, the street capoeiragem in Rio became associated with gangs and very different from the original Angolan art, including hand strikes, head butts, clubs and daggers.

In the early 20th century, Anibal Burlamaqui and Agenor Moreira Sampaio first codified the street version of capoeira as a national martial art, removing music and dance and incorporating strikes from boxing, judo and other disciplines. In the 1930s, Mestre Bimba founded the regional style of capoeira in Salvador, Bahia, incorporating traditional elements of music and dance, as well as new elements from other martial arts. Finally, in the 1940s, in response to the popularization of corrupted forms of capoeira, Mestre Pastinha founded the Capoeira Angola school, returning capoeira to its African roots.

Modern capoeira remains firmly based on crescent and pushing kicks (often from inverted positions), sweeps, and acrobatic evasions inherited from engolo.^[43] Professor Desch-Obi finds that the evolution from engolo to capoeira took place within a relatively isolated context, because the Portuguese lacked prevalent unarmed martial art to blend with. Some punching and grappling techniques were used in street combat, but they were not incorporated into the philosophy, aesthetics and rituals of capoeira. The sole new form incorporated in engolo was headbutting, derived from a distinct African practice known as jogo de cabeçadas. Headbutts was a major component of the street-fighting capoeira in Rio, but only a few butts entered the regular practice.^[44]

One observer remarked that “the Brazilian capoeira is nothing other than our engolo done to different songs."^[45] Also, the angolan painter Neves e Sousa, who drew engolo games in Mucope, visited Brazil in 1960s asserting that "N’golo is capoeira".^[2]

Base step

Engolo's movements are rooted in the specific fundamental jumping moves, that serve as the foundation for offensive and evasive maneuvers. In contrast to capoeira ginga, engolo jumps can attain remarkable heights, often honed through exercises like jumping cattle fences.^[17]

Kicks

Engolo chapa

In contrast to the quick, snapping kicks commonly found in Asian martial arts, engolo predominantly features circular or crescent kicks. When straight kicks are employed, they are usually pushing kicks. Engolo's distinctive set of moves prominently includes inverted kicks in the handstand position.^[13]

Crescent kicks (meia lua)

Main article: Meia lua de frente

Front crescent kick and jump escape.

Front crescent kick is one of the basic engolo kick, documented both in 20th and 21st century. There are numerous variations of this basic kick in engolo: ^[17]

• front crescent kick (okupayeka,^[20] pt. meia lua de frente)
  • high front crescent
  • medium front crescent
  • jumping front crescent
• reversed front crescent (queixada)
• back crescent kick (armada)

The leg used for kicking can be extended fully or partially bent.^[17]

Evasions

Front crescent kick and low dodge (defensive squat).

The core of engolo lies in the practitioner's ability to defend themselves through agile movements like ducking, twisting, and leaping.^[11]

Unlike defensive maneuvers seen in Angolan kandeka slapboxing, engolo does not include blocking movements. Instead, skilled practitioners must gracefully evade attacks by going over, under, or employing fluid, evasive techniques. Some of the common evasive techniques are:

• defensive squat^[47]
• spinning away from kick^[47]
• angling away from kick^[48]
• falling back escape^[47]
• escape with cartwheel (okuyepa)^[14]

Assunção finds that contemporary engolo employs five fundamental evasions against kicks, including: ^[17]

• defensive squat (dodge under the opponent's kick by lowering the head and guarding the face with an arm)
• high escape (escape while keeping the body upright)
• jump escape (with one or both arms raised or even with the counter kick)
• short jump escape (guard with one hand while do a brief jump to move the body out of the kick's range)
• entering into the opponent's kick (while guarding the face)

Takedowns

Angelino Tchimbundo demonstrates sweeping kick on capoeira Mestre Cobra Mansa, Angola, 2011.

Another set of movements distinct for engolo includes foot sweeps. Few basic types are:

• crouching sweep (okukondjola)^[49]
• standing sweep (okukondjola olumbimbi)^[49]
• hip checking sweep^[50]

Four variations of sweeps or takedowns were documented during engolo game in the 2010s: ^[17]

• a lateral sweeping kick resembling the capoeira banda, causing the opponent's foot to lift off the ground, leading to a fall.
• a rasteira, where one strategically places their instep behind the adversary's standing heel and then pulls or drags forward to disrupt their balance.
• a defending sweep against the opponent's rasteira (observed during lessons but rarely used in gameplay).
• a rasteira targeting the opponent's knee.

Acrobatics

Documented acrobatics techniques in engolo includes: ^[51]

• handstand
• headstand
• cartwheel

Engolo using handstands and cartwheels both for kicks and evasive maneuvers. Multiple early drawings clearly demonstrates these techniques.^[27]

Inverted worldview

Kalûnga in Kongo religion represents the idea that in the realm of the living everything is reversed from the realm of the ancestors. Where men walk on their feet, the spirits walk on their hands; where men are black, the spirits are white; where men reach physical abilities, the ancestors reach spirituality.^[52] Dweller of the ancestral realm are inverted compared to us, as viewed from our mirrored perspective.^[52] With this worldview, practitioners of African martial arts deliberately invert themselves upside down to emulate the ancestors, and to draw power from the ancestral realm.^[52][53]

Spirit possession

Engolo drums

I initiated with the spirit when I was already ill. They said it was my grandfather Mukwya. I did not know him. I was already an engolo dancer when the spirit found me.^[17]

— Kahani Waupeta

An integral aspect of engolo game is incorporation of ancestral spirit. Historical accounts document that certain Engolo players underwent a ritual of spirit possession (oktonkheka) guided by their engolo teachers. All engolo players unanimously agreed that this connection typically extended to a family member who had previously engaged in engolo and had developed a distinct bond with the descendant they are presently embodying.^[17]

My friend, if you see me dancing, you will say, "What is happening to this old man?" You will pay attention, because you know what my way of dancing is. You will only get scared when I'm crying. You will feel the heat. People can ask me questions; I won't say a word. I will only speak later on.^[17]

— Munekavela Katumbela

When a player is possessed by a spirit, this transformation may not manifest immediately, as they continue with the game, maybe playing even better than usual. However, the shift in their behavior becomes evident to the audience, especially in their communication.^[17]

Engolo as a part of rituals

Painter Neves e Sousa described engolo as part of a rite of passage (efico and omuhelo), wherein young boys competed for a bride.^[54] Desch-Obi finds that engolo is not a part of any specific ritual but was often performed during community celebrations or rites. At other times, it might be employed for dueling, self-defense, or merely a recreation.^[12]