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Capoeira Mestres Series - Mestre Acordeon


Capoeira is not a costume to be worn at any given time or according to the occasion. Capoeira is the skin itself!
- Mestre Acordeon
Founder of the Capoeira Arts Foundation and UCA – United Capoeira Association

BIO

Ubirajara Guimarães Almeida (born in 1943), better known as Mestre Acordeon, is an iconic Capoeira master from Bahia, Brazil who teaches in Berkeley, CA.

His international reputation as a respected capoeira master, performer, musician, organizer, and author is built upon fifty years of active practice, as well as research into the origins, traditions, political connotations, and contemporary trends of Capoeira. Mestre Acordeon has travelled extensively promoting Capoeira outside Brazil.

Mestre Acordeon was a student of the legendary Mestre Bimba in the late 1950s and began teaching Capoeira in the early 1960s. He founded the Grupo folclorico da Bahia in 1966 that performed the show Vem Camará: Histórias de Capoeira in the Teatro Jovem in Rio de Janeiro. The show presented an approach to Capoeira that influenced a new generation of young capoeiristas and affirmed the concept of grupo de capoeira and today’s capoeira regional.



Mestre Acordeon won three Brazilian Capoeira National Championships in the 1970s. At the end of 1978 Mestre Acordeon came to the United States and soon introduced Capoeira to the West Coast. 1979 became a turning point in the global growth trajectory of Capoeira.

Mestre Acordeon has recorded 9 CDs, produced 3 DVDs, and is the author of magazine articles and books about Capoeira, including Agua de Beber, Camará: A bate Papo de Capoeira, and the Capoeira Arts Café: An Academia de Capoeira. His book Capoeira: A Brazilian Art Form, was the first Capoeira book in English. He has received honors in support of his practice, teaching, and research of Capoeira. Among them, in the Fall of 1994, he became the first “artist” to receive the Tinker Visiting Professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2008, in recognition of his thirty years of continuous work in the West Coast, the City of Berkeley proclaimed October 18 as Mestre Acordeon Day.
Sources:
 http://www.capoeira-music.net/capoeira-mestres/capoeira-music-by-mestre-acordeon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bira_Almeida


B2B PROJECT

 From Berkeley, California, to Bahia, Brazil, by bicycle!! – B2B is a Mestre Acordeon’s transmedia project, which documented the development of Capoeira in the Americas and the adventurous journey/research of a group of Capoeiristas (around 20 mestres and 12 students) that traveled from California to Brazil by bike, from 2013 to 2014. One main goal was to raise funds from the TV documentary, Music CD and Book to Project Kirimurê - which provides a positive learning environment for kids at risk in Salvador, Bahia. Mestre Acordeon had turned 70 right before the project started! There are plenty of videos available online documenting this great adventure. Watch this interview with Mestre Acordeon at the end of the project to learn more.

Huffington Post Article about Mestre Acordeon's B2B Project

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