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Bira Almeida — better known as Mestre Acordeon — is one of the few officially and truly recognized masters of capoeira. [Ed: Capoeira is a Brazilian martial arts dance.] He graduated in capoeira from the “Centro de Cultural Fisica Regional” of Brazil in 1959. This center was the famous school of Mestre Bimba (1889-1974), the patron of capoeira and its most respected master. Almeida is the founder of the World Capoeira Association (1979) and the author of the book Capoeira: A Brazilian Art Form (North Atlantic Books, 1982). He is also the founder of the “Grupo Folclorico da Bahia” (1966) which won three international folkloric festivals. Additionally, Almeida is a folklore researcher, a playwright, a song writer, a musician, and a film actor specializing in Afro-Brazilian themes. He is a native of Brazil.
To talk, as some do, about “making a world without war” when we’d be lucky to have a world without nuclear weapons, is talking hearsay and utopian theory. We can’t just talk peace, we have to be peace, or it’s another kind of bravado. I’d like a world without war; but we’d all settle for a world without wars that kill everything. — Gary Snyder
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