Manuel dos Reis Machado

Manuel dos Reis Machado, widely known as Mestre Bimba, was a Brazilian capoeira master who created the regional style of capoeira. His nickname, which literally means "phallus," came from a bet between his mother and the midwife at his birth—his mother thought he would be a girl, and the midwife pointed to his "bimba" to confirm he was a boy. In Brazil, the word also meant "beating." He was born on either November 23, 1899 or 1900, in the Engenho Velho neighborhood of Salvador, one of 25 children of Luiz Cândido Machado and Maria Martinha do Bonfim. Before learning capoeira, he picked up techniques of batuque, a related fighting-dance, from his father, who was a champion in that style. As a young street fighter, he was called Três Pancadas ("three blows") because people said that was all the punches he needed to knock someone down.

Bimba started learning capoeira at age 12 from an African boat commander named Bentinho. By the time he was 18, he felt capoeira had lost its effectiveness as a martial art and become a folkloric activity with only nine movements. So he began restoring moves from older capoeira (later called Angola), adding techniques from batuque, and inventing his own. He was also responding to efforts by Burlamaqui and Sinhôzinho to strip capoeira of music and African traditions, turning it into just physical techniques. Bimba was the first to create a structured teaching method—previously, people learned only by watching and joining the roda. He initially called his style Luta Regional de Bahia, later shortened to capoeira regional. Some sources say he was influenced by other martial arts, such as judo, boxing, and wrestling, and that he studied methods from teachers like Mestre Sinhozinho and Anibal Burlamaqui. Others, including Mestre Itapoan, argue that all his movements came from batuque or capoeira itself, noting that similar techniques existed before Eastern martial arts arrived in Brazil. Bimba encouraged adding effective new kicks to the basic footwork, ginga. In 1936, he said he had removed two kicks and added 15 to traditional capoeira; later, the total reached 52 techniques. The martelo and queixada kicks, which he introduced, became hallmarks of regional style.

In 1928, Bimba demonstrated his style for Bahia's governor, Juracy Magalhães, who then overturned the ban on capoeira in Bahia and encouraged Bimba to open a school. He founded the first capoeira school in 1932, called the Academia-escola de Cultura Regional, in the Engenho de Brotas area of Salvador. To fight capoeira's reputation as a practice of devious, malicious people, he set new standards: students had to wear clean white uniforms, show proof of school grades, exercise discipline, and maintain good posture. This attracted doctors, lawyers, politicians, upper-middle-class people, and women, who had previously been excluded. He did accept some exceptionally poor students, but only if they showed talent or attitude. Initially, he tested new students by putting them in a strong neck lock for three minutes; only those who endured without tapping out were accepted. Later, after his student Cisnando Lima joined, he changed the test to a flexibility demonstration and a written exam. His use of predetermined movement sequences as a teaching method was a major innovation, as was teaching capoeira to a broader audience, which helped spread the art across social groups and contributed to its decriminalization. Bimba was also an excellent singer and berimbau player.