Mandingueira

Dear readers,

Please accept my profuse apologies for my recent bout of being MIA! Right after my exams I kind of crashed in exhaustion/relief, and then had approximately 1 day before yet one more batizado, from which I think I’m still recovering .

As well, something I kind of failed to mention thus far is that I’ve actually been studying on exchange in France all this year…which explains all the travelling I’ve been able to do! And as I type right now, I’m waiting for my landlord to come up and examine my apartment (so I can get my deposit back, fingers crossed), and my suitcases are packed and waiting for me to lug them back to Canada…early tomorrow morning! The preparations for which, I hope, further explain my hiatus.

However, I haven’t stopped thinking about this blog and new topics and debates for it all this time, so as soon as I settle back into life and my new summer job back in Canada, Mandingueira will be up and running again at full force! Thank you so much for your patience and reader loyalty, and I will talk to you soon! I love you guys!

-Joaninha

Psst…look up at your URL address bar! Notice anything different?

Thanks to a particularly informative post by Raul at hummingbird604.com, I’ve managed to give Mandingueira its very own domain name! No more “.wordpress” clutter (as much as I do love WordPress!).

The best part? No re-linking is involved! Everything is automatically redirected. So for everyone out there who has linked, favourited, bookmarked, or subscribed to me in one way or another (to those who have, please know you have my profuse thanks ; to those who haven’t, there’s no time like the present ), you can relax and—do nothing!

That is, do nothing but from now on tell your friends: “Hey, you’ve gotta check out this brilliant capoeira blog I read. Just go to mandingueira.com!”

p.s. In case you missed it because of the close timing between them, there is another new post under this one!

Today, in the blogosphere, is RSS Awareness Day. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and is a tool people use that gathers all of their favourite blogs and those blogs’ post updates in one place for you to read.

If you look on this page’s sidebar, you’ll see an orange logo: wherever you see that, there is an RSS feed (constantly updated collection of that blog’s posts) for the blog available for subscription.

So today’s question is: Will you subscribe to Mandingueira?

If you enjoy my posts or find them interesting, please subscribe! You can subscribe using RSS by clicking on the orange logo above or the “Subscribe” button in the sidebar, or you can receive Mandingueira in your inbox by clicking on the “By email” button, also in the sidebar. Subscribing means you will be automatically updated on every new post, and if a certain Comments discussion catches your attention, you can subscribe to receive comment updates in specific posts, as well.

Now, what are you waiting for? Please click here to subscribe by RSS, or click here to subscribe by email, and thank you!

Excerpt: 

“Vision without action is merely a dream,” as the saying goes.
…
In a way, this transformation of ideas into action parallels how many (though not all) capoeira students first learn to think about various concepts and ideas in capoeira, and then learn to apply them while playing in the roda.

Click here to continue reading

P.S.  This is just a reminder to you guys that even if the Blue Snake posts aren’t on my blog, you can still comment on them!  I will still be the one who replies.

Now that I’ve caught up with all your responses:

Nearly 4000 words’ worth of comments, and I’m still not sure we’re any closer to the answer.

However, no one can accuse us of not trying!  Wow.

Click here to read it!

Just what the title says—reached today!  Funnily enough, it’s almost exactly 3 months from the time I started Mandingueira (Nov. 30), and it was at exactly 1 month that I reached 1000 hits.  Thank you so much to everyone who reads this blog and told people about it, and for all your awesome, informative, brilliant, insightful comments!  Let’s keep it going…

P.S.  Not quite in honour of the occasion, but thanks to good timing, check out the nifty business cards I made for the blog!

Sorry for the hiatus, everyone!  I tried to semi-warn you with my batizado post, i.e. that I’d be away at the batizado all this weekend and so might not have internet access, if even time to post anything!  But the batizado was awesome (or is; there’s still the wrap-up party to go!), everyone was really nice and the workshops were great!  Shayna, I didn’t have time to respond to your comment yet but I was going to say your solution for mixed rodas was so simple I couldn’t believe it didn’t occur to me, and so brilliant I can’t believe no one’s done it!  BUT that’s what they did at this batizado!  Eight-person, mixed-level, free-for-all rodas, and they were so good: totally the best of both worlds.  You could move between rodas as well, for even more flexibility regarding who you wanted to play—including mestres/contra-mestres!  We also had a 1-hr professional pandeiros workshop, and I definitely won’t think about passing it over so easily anymore for the berimbau or atabaque! 

If any of you recognize what I’m talking about, by the way, and happen to read this before the boat party, look for me there! 

-Joaninha

Just what the title says!

Find it here: Capoeira é Magia: ACSF and Why Capoeira Changes Us

Is your grupo building a school in Brazil?  Has your mestra/e organized a panel on women in capoeira?  Does a capoeirista you know inspire change wherever s/he goes, through their love of capoeira and passion for the art?

If so, I want to hear about it! 

Readers/fellow capoeiristas!  This is your chance to contribute, and moreover your chance to turn the spotlight on that deserving someone or worthwhile project that you feel the world needs to know about.  Here’s how it works:

1. You send me an email describing who or what you want to spotlight, and why you think I should write about them.  The only criteria is that it has to have something directly to do with how capoeira is helping to make a difference in the world.  I won’t put a word count limit on it, but please keep in mind time constraints and that your submission will not necessarily be chosen.  Send the email to axejoaninha[at]gmail[dot]com, with subject line: Spotlight Capoeira and Change.

2. If your email is chosen, I will send a reply asking for more information about the person/project/story, including contacts and possibly photos.  The article I write will then be featured on Blue Snake Books Blog, as part of their/my ongoing Capoeira and Change series (and of course publicized here on Mandingueira).

What’s in it for you?

Well, first of all, those warm fuzzies that we all love so much!  But in more tangible terms:

• You will receive the very cool custom-made Mandingueira spiral-bound capoeira notebook featured in the picture below.  (Perfect for keeping track of all those sequences and song lyrics!)
• Your spotlightee(s) will receive a donation ($20 CDN), if a current project and accepting, or also a notebook, if an individual person.

So, what are you waiting for?  If there’s a time for you to speak up, it’s now!  And don’t just tell me—tell your sister about this, your partner, your best friend, your contra-mestra, and every capoeirista you know!  This will be an ongoing project, which means unless I indicate otherwise before then, I’ll still be accepting emails for this six days, three weeks, two months, etc., from now.  Please keep in mind, though, that it doesn’t count if you tell me about something already mentioned on this blog or that is obvious/easy to find (e.g. ABADA Capoeira San Francisco, Grupo Nzinga), unless you are writing about a specific project or movement that may or may not be widely known yet.  Finally, also please know that if you email me about something and I don’t write about it right away, that does not mean I won’t write about it some time in the future!

To find out more about the thoughts and ideas behind this, or what exactly I mean by “capoeira and change”, please read these posts (if you haven’t already):

Can Capoeira Change the World?
Can Capoeira Change the World? Part 2
Capoeira as a Force of Change

— 

To: axejoaninha[at]gmail[dot]com
Subject: Spotlight Capoeira and Change

Body:

Over to you!

Update:
I’ve created a page on my site (see navigator bar) specifically for this project, for easy reference in the future.  Also, upon further thought I decided to pick a subject to spotlight no more than once a month.  Which means that you guys get a whooooole month to put in your proposals!