Master Paulo Siqueira was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1955. He migrated to Germany in the 1980s, where he became known for organising, since 1987, the "Capoeira Sommer Meeting", one of the great capoeira events in Europe in the last decades of the 20th century.
Matthias Röhrig Assunção (November 2024)
He initially lived with his mother in Bonsucesso, also used to go to his paternal grandfather’s house in Ramos, but then moved in with his maternal grandfather in a villa in Botafogo. In other words, he spent his childhood between the South Zone, Flamengo and Botafogo; and the North Zone, Ramos, Olaria and Penha. Paulo remembers that the first time he saw ‘some guys warming up doing capoeira moves’ was at a Portela samba school gathering in Candelária, from where they would leave for the parade at Presidente Vargas.
Yet the person who took him to Mestre Roque’s capoeira academy was his friend Rubens, a fireman who practised boxing and capoeira and lived in the Cantagalo shantytown, next to the Pavão Hill. ‘When I arrived at Morro do Pavão by Rubens’ hand, mestre Roque was teaching, but he already wanted to leave for personal reasons, wanting to stop there and hand over to his most advanced student, Adilson. Adilson’s nickname was Adilson Camisa Preta. Paulo started training with Adilson, under the guidance of M Roque, in 1972 or so.
In the image: Mestre Paulo Siqueira, around 1978, plays the berimbau at Mestres Roque and Adilson’s academy. Photo from the Paulo Siqueira collection.
There was a girl called Sandrinha. She was the best girl who played capoeira, in my opinion, at that time, she was the best woman capoeirista there was! And there were only two on the hill, in our class, right, there were only two, Sandrinha and another girl who came every now and then. But Sandrinha was there all the time, she trained all the time and she trained with the men.”After a few years, when he was already a more advanced student, Adilson told him: ‘You’re not going to pay for capoeira any more. Now you’re going to work with me’. And he started taking him to do shows with him and other students in concert halls, such as Almir Sinclair’s ‘Bahia Saravá’ show at the Galeria Alasca or at the Intercontinental Hotel in Vidigal. Years later he graduated Paulo Siqueira master.
In the world of shows
Through Adilson he also met Mercedes Batista, the first black dancer to enter the Municipal Theatre in Rio and who later became a famous choreographer. She gave capoeiristas like Paulo a scholarship to study at her academy in Copacabana, and said: “Capoeiristas can’t just be capoeiristas, if you want to work in the theatre you have to learn to do other things’. And she started teaching us how to do pas de deux, plié and there were the big black guys doing plié on the bar”.
So Paulo started working in the theatre and dance scene, and became known as ‘Siqueira’. He also hung out in Praça Tiradentes, and frequented a bar called ‘Ponto’ opposite the Carlos Gomes Theatre, which brought together various artists and musicians, and where he also met Master Roque from time to time.
In the photo, Mestre Paulo Siqueira executes a ginga with Mestre Roque, at IPCN, in the circle commemorating Roque’s birthday in 2015. Image from the Paulo Siqueira collection.
'Gingando' around Europe
At a certain point, a German producer called ‘Herr Ulm’ (Mr Ulm), who was passing through Brazil, sought him out and, after seeing him play capoeira, hired him for a tour in Germany. It was a one-year contract, to be renewed later, and he was based in the city of Hannover. It was there that he began giving his first lessons to a small group of fifteen people.
He then worked for nine months with a touring group called Festival do Brasil. After that, in 1985, a German woman who owned a theatre in Hamburg called Zeppelin hired him to teach and offered him a place to live in the theatre. He then settled in Hamburg and created his own group, Nzinga. He also started teaching in Hannover and Kiel.
In 1987 he began organising the annual Capoeira Sommer-Meeting. The “Sommer-Meeting”became one of the biggest capoeira events outside Brazil. It started on Monday and ended on Sunday, meaning a whole week of capoeira, lectures and parties, all taking place in the same venue, a large house in the centre of Hamburg.
Between 1987 and 2004, this event brought together between 300 and 600 capoeiristas from all over Europe each year, and always included the participation of Brazilian mestres based in Europe or coming from Brazil. In this way, the ‘Sommer-Meeting’ made a great contribution to the dissemination of the art and to raising the level of capoeira played in Europe, as well as innovating in terms of organising events.
Enjoy and watch the documentary video Alunos de Mestre Roque, a production by Capoeirahistory.
This text by Matthias Assunção is based on the interview given by Paulo Siqueira to Capoeirahistory, on July 16, 2019.
