LITMIR.BIZ

      Curiosa: Tell me about your background: Where were you born? Where and when did you start practicing capoeira?

      Zumbi: I was born and grew up in Jamaica. In 2000, I moved to the USA at the age of 23 where almost immediately I started to practice capoeira. I started in Berkley, California with Mestre Marcelo Caveirinha21 in the capoeira Mandinga group. At that time, it wasn’t so popular to use the name of Cordão de Ouro, so basically I started with CDO masters in a group with a different name. Capoeira became my passion and was my motivation to get good grades at university. I would allow myself 4 hours a day to practice capoeira but only if I got excellent grades!

      In 2003, I started to train with Mestre Chicote in Vallejo, Oakland, and SF. These times were hard ones because Chicote was giving classes at different hours and in different locations, still I tried to go to all of them even if they were far and ended late.

      Curiosa: When and how did you start to teach capoeira? Was it easy? Did it come naturally?

      Zumbi: In 2005, I started to teach capoeira with the yellow belt. I didn’t really make any income from teaching, but I saw it rather as a hobby that would allow me to organize my own workouts during the week. So, I would give classes at the same place and hour to my students from Mondays to Thursdays and trained with the big group from Fridays to Sundays.

      As to whether it was easy, discipline and goal setting have always been important for me. I enjoyed preparing for every class, explaining capoeira to others and mastering my own skills through teaching and for me teaching came easily; it is a part of learning.

      Curiosa: Who was your greatest inspiration in the practicing of capoeira?

      Zumbi: Among the people who inspired me and influenced my capoeira the most are the 2 first American masters: Beringela22 and Xangô23. They are geniuses in capoeira because they managed to excel in all areas of capoeira and to understand all cultural and traditional aspects of it without actually living in Brazil.

      Curiosa: Why and when did you move to South Korea? What was the situation with capoeira in Seoul at that time? What is the situation now?

      Zumbi: In 2009, a Korean company offered me a full-time job, which was too good to refuse, in Korea. So, I moved to Seoul and immediately started to search for capoeira classes. I found a group called Filhos de Bahia. The leader of the group was Mestre Nei Boa Morte. Their teacher’s name was Alegria, but he had temporarily stopped teaching and his wife was giving classes instead. I didn’t enjoy going to their classes and was training alone in a gym. The same year, a student of Alegria started a Muzenza group. I was visiting their rodas24 and helped them with their first Batizado.

      Soon after, I started my own group and right now I’m not getting on well with any other capoeira teachers in Korea. Most of these Korean teachers never left Korea and haven’t been to Brazil, so we always have disagreements on how things should be done.

      Curiosa: What did you do to form your first group?

      Zumbi: I came to Korea with a yellow/blue belt, and I was an estagiario.

      Curiosa: I know it as a monitor belt.

      Zumbi: In the class, if you have yellow/blue belt, your teacher tells you what to do and you show that to the class, then you become a monitor. However, if you don’t have a master who teaches you, or like in my case, you’re the only representative of your group in the whole country, you are called an estagiario.

      So, I was working out alone in a gym every day. One girl kept looking at me and finally I offered to teach her. I said, «If you want to learn, you should come every day at 6 am and be committed.» So that’s what she did. Soon she started to come with her best friend. We would have discussions and drinks after the classes until I eventually formed a capoeira club.

      I got lucky. My employer sponsored my club with $800 per month that I spent it mostly on musical instruments. Soon there wasn’t enough space for everybody to train. We rented an acrobatic studio, which cost $2000/month, for free. Again, it happened because the owners of the studio wanted to have good partnership with my employer. There were fifty students by then.

      Most of these students were highly educated Korean boys and girls between 22 and 32 years old. They all spoke English, so it was easy for me to give classes, although I had been learning Korean.

      Curiosa: How quickly did you learn Korean language?

      Zumbi: It took me four months to learn 40% of Korean language that I now speak. The rest took me more than three years.

      Curiosa:

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