Wired ancestrality: recording the Grupo de Capoeira Angola Estrela do Norte

Abstract

The proliferation of capoeira album recordings in styles such as Angola, Regional, and Contemporary reflects its national and transnational expansion, establishing it as one of Brazil’s most globally recognized cultural expressions. Ethnomusicologists have explored capoeira as a sonic performance space (DOWNEY, 2005), where bodily movement interacts with music shaped by the roda, berimbau, and other percussion instruments. However, few have examined how non-studio recording environments influence performance or how practitioners engage with sound's ancestral and spiritual dimensions. This paper analyzes the recording of Coco Maduro, an album by Grupo de Capoeira Angola Estrela do Norte, led by Mestre Iuri and recorded in 2024 at the group’s training space in Bloomington, Indiana. A central concern was the generation of axé, an Afro-Brazilian “spiritual energy or life force” (KURTZ, 2024), fundamental to capoeira and fostering sintonia—a resonant attunement between music and movement. Drawing on two years of fieldwork—including participant observation and participatory action research—this study also engages with the capoeira recordings made by Lorenzo Dow Turner in Bahia (1940–41), which inspired the album’s production. This analysis raises critical questions about how axé is conceptualized, how it translates sonically, and how space and spirituality shape Afro-diasporic recording practices.

Keywords: axé, Capoeira Angola, recording studio, ancestrality, Lorenzo Dow Turner.