Songs that name Mestre Aberrê, an Angola mestre the repertoire often sets beside Pastinha, Waldemar, and Traíra.

Afoxé is carnival street music from Bahia with a candomblé ijexá beat. Some capoeira groups bring these songs into demonstrations and the roda.

Songs that remember Africa as origin, ancestry, and return — the root many lyrics name when they talk about where capoeira comes from.

Songs about friendship, and how rare a straight friend is inside the game.

Capoeira Angola is the older, closer game: played low and slow, with a strong ritual around the berimbau. The ladainha and chula belong to this circle.

Songs of the sand. Some are the work corrido about gathering it (“Vamos apanhar areia”); others put the beach, or a grain of sand, in the title.

Axé is life force and blessing, a word from candomblé that the roda uses when the energy is high.

Songs that keep Bahia in the title, or come back to the name line after line.

Songs associated with Mestre Barrão and the Axé Capoeira repertoire.

Benguela is a mid-tempo toque and game, between Angola and São Bento Grande: grounded, tricky, and less of a fight than the fast games.

Songs about the berimbau, the musical bow that leads the roda: its toques, its voice, and the respect due to it.

Songs about Besouro Mangangá of Santo Amaro, the capoeirista whose fights turned into legend.

Songs that name Mestre Bimba (Manoel dos Reis Machado), the teacher who shaped Capoeira Regional in Salvador.

Songs of the ox: the vaqueiro, the bumba meu boi, and the animal that does not come back from the woods.

Songs that name Mestre Caiçara.

Songs that name Mestre Canjiquinha, a singer and Angola mestre from Bahia.

Songs that speak of capoeira itself — what it is, who plays, and why it matters — rather than a side story in the lyric.

Cavalaria is a warning toque. It once told the roda that police or outsiders were coming, so the game could change or stop.

In Capoeira Angola, the chula is the praise song after the ladainha. Players stay at the foot of the berimbau; the game begins when it finishes.

Songs in which the cobra is a figure — the bite, the hole, the coral snake — rather than a passing comparison.

Corridos are call-and-response songs sung while the game is on. The soloist calls a line and the chorus answers, keeping the roda moving.

Songs about custom and everyday Bahia around the roda: food, feast days, and the life beside the game.

Dendê is palm oil. In the roda the word means the game has flavor and force.

Songs about money — who has it, who lost it, and what it cannot buy.

Songs of slavery: the senzala, the overseer, the whip, and what stayed after abolition.

Folk themes that sit next to the fight: animals, work, and feast-day stories sung in the round.

Songs about the ginga, the swaying base step of capoeira, and the malícia inside that movement.

Songs that tell capoeira’s past: quilombos, persecution, revolt, and mestres who kept the game alive.

Traditional corridos that call Idalina — and sometimes Catarina — into the game.

Songs that name the orchestra of the roda: berimbau, pandeiro, atabaque, agogô, and reco-reco.

Iúna is a solemn toque reserved for high-graduation games and demonstrations, usually without the usual call-and-response singing.

Songs that name Mestre João Grande, the Angola mestre who learned from João Pequeno.

Songs that name Mestre João Pequeno, the Angola teacher linked with Pastinha.

Jogo de dentro is the close game, played where there is no room to run. These songs name it.

The ladainha is the opening litany of a Capoeira Angola roda. One voice sings a story or prayer while the circle listens; the game does not start until it ends.

Story songs of the game: Besouro, Saci, and other folk figures whose names still get called in the roda.

Songs that speak of liberdade, freedom itself. The Liberdade neighborhood in Salvador, and the epithet in “Waldemar da Liberdade,” are not this tag.

Maculelê is a stick dance from Bahia, often taught alongside capoeira. These songs belong to that game, not to the roda proper.

Songs about malícia: showing less than you know, and letting the other player step into the trap.

Songs about mandinga: the cunning, almost magical side of capoeira — feints, charm, and not showing everything you know.

Songs of the sea: the tide, the shore, the sailor, and the crossing.

Songs with menino or menina in the title: the boy or the girl the verse is spoken to.

Songs that name teachers and lineage: who taught whom, and who is owed respect in the roda.

Songs about women. A title that calls her morena, iaiá, or sinhá is included; a stray “ô iaiá” at the end of a line is not.

Songs that name nagô, the Yoruba nation in Bahia, as a lineage of capoeira or as a people.

Songs of the navalha and the sharpened knife, the blade the old game remembers.

Songs that greet or tell of the orixás of candomblé, whose stories sit under much of the ritual around the roda.

Paraná is the answer shouted back in a famous corrido. These are the songs that carry that call in the title, not the state and not Mestre Paraná.

Songs that name Mestre Pastinha (Vicente Ferreira Pastinha), the teacher most tied to Capoeira Angola in the twentieth century.

Songs that name Bahia, Salvador, the sea, or other places the repertoire keeps coming back to.

Quadras are short four-line verses. They often sit between the ladainha and the corridos, or stand as compact songs of their own.

Songs of the quilombo and of Palmares, the communities built by people who had escaped slavery.

Capoeira Regional is the style created by Mestre Bimba: a faster, more upright game with its own sequence of lessons and songs.

Songs with prayer, saints, orixás, or the church — the spiritual layer of the repertoire.

Songs about the circle itself: who enters, who watches, and how the game is offered at the foot of the berimbau.

Songs of Saci-Pererê, the one-legged trickster of Brazilian folklore.

Songs that name Salvador, the city of the roda. “São Salvador” is included.

Samba de roda from Recôncavo Baiano, a close cousin of capoeira: clapping, atabaque, and a singer in the round.

Santa Maria is the toque Mestre Bimba treated as the hymn of Capoeira Regional. These songs name it.

São Bento Grande is a fast toque for an open, upright game — the classic Regional rhythm for kicks and escapes.

São Bento Pequeno is a quicker Angola toque, still close to the ground but livelier than the slow Angola game.

Songs of saudade: longing for a person, a place, or a time that does not come back.

Songs of the sereia, the mermaid who shows up in stories beside the roda.

Songs that name Mestre Suassuna in the lyric. A title that only credits him as the author is not enough.

Songs that name Mestre Traíra, an old Angola mestre usually remembered with Waldemar and Aberrê.

Songs on this site that include a video recording.

The volta ao mundo is the walk around the circle that pauses the game and starts it again. These songs name that walk.

Songs that name Mestre Waldemar, also sung as Valdemar, the Angola mestre remembered for his roda and his berimbau.

Songs that name Zumbi dos Palmares, leader of the great quilombo and a symbol of the fight against slavery.