A capoeira gospel em João Pessoa (PB): entre discursos e performances.

Abstract

The roda de capoeira was listed by Unesco, in 2014, as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, having already been inventoried and safeguarded as a master craft. There are three established styles of capoeira: capoeira angola, capoeira regional and capoeira contemporary. However, from the 2000s onwards, a new denomination comes to the fore in capoeira, which is not a new style of capoeira or a new way of playing the game itself. It is the emergence of what became known as capoeira gospel, that is, capoeira works (groups and associations) self-styled Christians that emerged spontaneously in various parts of Brazil and that use capoeira as a form of evangelization. The main objective of

this work is to analyze gospel capoeira in the city of João Pessoa under the theoretical- methodological prism of interpretive anthropology and performance anthropology, in line

with the local historical context and that of collective representations. Therefore, through the ethnographic record carried out with a group of evangelical capoeiristas from that city, we sought to: understand, from the analysis of their modes of expression and symbolic forms, what are the meanings inscribed in this practice; present the context of its emergence, its historical path and its main masters; to investigate whether fundamental elements inherent to secular capoeira were being suppressed or recontextualized in the case studied; to describe and analyze the performative, performative and performativity forms present in gospel capoeira, paying attention to its multivocal and multisensory aspects, highlighting emerging meanings during the performance.