In this article, Zainabu Jallo explores how embodied practices such as Capoeira and Garífuna healing rituals preserve memory and meaning across the Afro-Atlantic. Drawing on Esiaba Irobi’s concept of corporeal semiology, the text examines how dance, ritual, and performance encode history, resistance, and spiritual knowledge.

Esiaba Irobi, in “What They Came With: Carnival and the Persistence of African Performance Aesthetics in the Diaspora”, nudges us to consider the multiple ways in which many traditional African practices have historically depended on and continue to depend on, highly ritualized and performed activities. These practices manifest in everyday occurrences and significant ceremonial acts, where knowledge is embodied and experienced on a visceral level, conveyed, and shared through physical expression.

This perspective positions the human body as a fundamental source, location, and focal point for how things are perceived and meaning-making. Irobi explains that dance, for example, is a form of “kinaesthetic literacy,” serving as a primary medium for encoding our perceptions of both the external and internal realms, of transcendent experiences, of spiritual heritage, and the intricate memories of rich histories.

“Because the ontology of most African peoples is primarily spiritual, the physical body incorporates, at one level, habit memory through which functional activities such as climbing, sculpting handwork, gestures, prostrations, and styles of walking are created and mastered. At the secondary modelling level (i.e., the more complex, metalingual system of communication), African societies consciously fashion a corporeal semiology through which the body becomes the symbolic repository of transcendent and expressive as well as philosophical ideas associated with religion, worship, divine, ritual ceremony, celebration, war, weddings funerals, royalty, politics, and so on.” (Irobi, 2007: pp. 898-99)

Through the lens of phenomenology – the way we experience things as sentient beings – the essay examines how embodied knowledge forms were transmitted across the Atlantic, shaping the aesthetics of ritual, festive, and carnival performances in the Afro-Atlantic.

Corporeal semiology, then, is the idea that the body speaks – through movement, rhythm, and ritual. Within Afro-diasporic communities, it carries memories of displacement, channels acts of resistance, and keeps spiritual traditions alive, long after words fall short.

Capoeira

An illustration of Corporeal Semiology can be identified in Capoeira performances that developed in Brazil. Engaging in Capoeira necessitates a rhythm established by the atabaque (drums), berimbau (a musical bow), and agogô (a metal gong). This ensemble music possesses a unique character. Two participants, guided by the sound of the berimbau, execute movements that involve attack, defence, and evasion. They simulate a combat scenario.

Grasping Capoeira demands not only skill and strength but also a sense of integration and respect between the partners. The gingado (bodily movement) is essential to Capoeira. It represents a rhythmic motion that allows the body to remain relaxed while the centre of gravity is perpetually in motion. From the gingado, various movements arise. The players are in continuous motion, which renders Capoeira a spectacle.

Let’s take a closer look at its history.

In the film Dança de Guerra (1968), Capoeira researcher and documentary filmmaker Jair Fernandes Moura explores the lives of Capoeiristas, illustrating the historical development of Capoeira and its cultural expressions, which encompass rituals dedicated to Orixás (deities) before the commencement of a fight. This practice embodies both a spiritual and physical pursuit; however, since its recognition as a sport, capoeira schools have emerged globally, often lacking its spiritual dimensions. Nevertheless, in Brazil, many capoeiristas poignantly maintain it as a practice of embodied memory from antipassadas – those who preceded them.

Garífuna

Another ritualized performance to consider is of the Garífuna, an Afro-indigenous group with a blend of African and Indigenous heritage, primarily inhabiting the coastal regions of Central America. The Walagallo healing ceremonies, which have been passed down through generations (also known as dugü by the Garífunas in Honduras and Belize), represent a fundamental aspect of their belief system and acts of resistance.

A notable expression of this belief system, which has been celebrated for centuries, involves a collective endeavour to address severe illness. During this ritual, the Garífunas demonstrate that the intercession of their ancestors is vital for deciphering the enigma of a disease that could lead to death. In the ceremony, the Garífunas come together as a community to heal an ailing individual while courageously asserting their identity and unity with their ancestors. Through the performative rites, which include rhythmic supplications in prayer, dancing, drumming, and specific ways of sharing food, their aim is not only to protect the life of one of their members as a cohesive entity of both the living and the deceased but also to fortify the connection between their ancestral legacy and contemporary existence.

Like Capoeira, this ritual unveils what Esiaba Irobi refers to as a “corporeal semiology” – a framework in which the body encodes memory, ancestry, and spiritual knowledge . Through rhythm, movement, and communal performance, the Garífuna ceremony transforms into a dynamic archive, akin to the roda de Capoeira, where physical expression transports the past into the present.

In sum, some of the ways in which Indigenous African practices were conveyed across the Atlantic include kinaesthetic literacy, embodied knowledge, and iconographic literacy, in contrast to cryptographic or typographic forms. Together, Capoeira and the Garífuna healing ceremony show how the body can act as both symbol and vessel – preserving memory, transmitting resistance, and affirming belonging across generations and geographies.

Author: Zainabu Jallo

References

Idiáquez, J. (1993). The Walagallo: Heart of the Garifuna World. Revista Envío 145.

Irobi, E. (2007). “What They Came with: Carnival and the Persistence of African Performance Aesthetics in the Diaspora”. Journal of Black Studies 37(6), 896-913.

Moura, J. F. (1968). Dança de Guerra.

Further resources

Ethnographic Imagination Basel. On Dance – with Hélène Neveu Kringelbach and Lesley Nicole Braun.

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