With its roots in the Bantu ritual dance N’golo from the Southern centre of Africa, blended with movements inspired by animals (notably the parrot, the cock and the monkey), capoeira is the result of the merging of many ethnic elements receiving its name from the clearings in the forest where it used to be practised.

Developed during the nineteenth century in the senzalas (or slave houses), public squares and quilombos (refuges of the slaves) of Bahia, Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro capoeira established itself as an element of ethnic and cultural identity amongst the slaves and was used as an instrument of freedom.