San Diego Capoeira Batizado

Batizado 2025: African Brazilian Capoeira Initiation & Celebration

Join us for Batizado 2025 at the WorldBeat Cultural Arts Center—a powerful celebration of African Brazilian tradition, rhythm, and movement. The Batizado (meaning “baptism”) is a Capoeira initiation ceremony where new students are formally welcomed into the roda (circle), and returning students are honored for their growth and mastery.

This year’s guest teachers and master include Mestre Touro, Mestre Preto Velho, Mestre Caveira, and Contra-Mestre Bode Contador,

Capoeira is a martial art integrated with dance, ritual, and gravity defying acrobatics. It is marked by deft, tricky movements often played on the ground or completely inverted. It is always played with music. Capoeira balances the body, soul and mind. It is a graceful and exciting art form that teaches you to be alert. Capoeira is both a dance and a fight which asks you also engage your mind in learning its music, culture, history and knowledge.

Batizado literally means “baptism”; besides being an initiation rite for new students it is also a graduation ceremony for advanced students and a great capoeira community celebration with masters from near and far are invited and the fraternity of capoeira is measurably strengthened by the camaraderie and interplay.

Capoeira is usually done inside a circle of people called a “roda”, pronouced HO-DUH. The people in the circle are usually other capoeiristas waiting to “play”, and observers.

A roda will usually commence with a ladainha (litany), often sung by the most senior member present. These songs may be improvised on the spot, but are often famous songs written by an earlier mestre and sung in Portuguese. After the ladainha has been sung, the same singer will usually sing the chulas, which are usually made up of any of the lines listed in the chulas section below but, again, may be improvised on the spot. The chorus repeats each line of the chula after it has been sung. Finally, corridos will be sung while the game is playing. In most rodas anyone can sing a corrido, though most often they will be sung by the members of the group playing instruments, the bateria.