This conversation between Capoeria artist Jarrel Phillips and The Bridge Project’s co-director Hope Mohr took place over zoom on September 15, 2020 as part of Power Shift: Improvisation, Activism, and Community.
Jarrel Phillips will be performing live as part of Power Shift on October 9, 2020. Tickets are available HERE.
Jarrel Phillips is a performance artist utilizing mixed media to tell, preserve, and connect our stories across the globe. Drawing heavily on experience as a San Francisco Fillmore native and student of Capoeira, much of his work explores the beauty and resilience of the African diaspora and its global presence and influence. Phillips’ work emphasizes “living folklore,” the unfolding and continued cultivation of our lived experience, from the past to the present, through our community history. www.jarrelphillips.com
////
I'm Hope Mohr. I'm one of the co-curators of the Bridge Project, along with Cherie Hill and Karla Quintero. I'm here today talking with Jarrel Phillips, who is one of HMD's current Community Engagement Residency lead artists and a featured performer in Power Shift: Improvisation, Activism, and Community. We're going to talk about Jarrel's practice as an artist. Hi Jarrel.
Jarrel Phillips:
Hello. How are you?
Hope Mohr:
Good. How are you?
Jarrel Phillips:
Chillin’.
Hope Mohr:
Can you talk about what your path has been as a capoeirista? How did you get started?
Jarrel Phillips:
I started when I was seven years old at the African American Art and Cultural Center in the Fillmore [District of San Francisco] at a program called Wajumbe. It was a place where we explored different art forms of the African diaspora. We learned about everything related to Africa and African arts and African storytelling. Capoeira was one of the things we did. I did that for almost two years. I received a belt in 1994. I returned about 10 or 11 years later as an adult and found the same teacher. I’ve been doing capoeira ever since.
Hope Mohr:
Can you say more about who your important teachers have been in the practice? Either here or in Brazil?
Jarrel Phillips:
I started with three teachers. In the program we went by aunties and uncles. So it was Uncle Urubu, Uncle Lowe and then Uncle Mike. Uncle Mike is African-American. I train now with Uncle Urubu, he's my teacher still to this day. I went to visit him actually recently for his birthday. I can name teachers that I visit when I'm in Brazil: Mestre Nenel and Mestre Valmir Those are people I train with when I'm out there.
Hope Mohr:
I know you go to Brazil a lot. Can you talk about why that's important to your practice and what you do then when you're there?
Jarrel Phillips:
The Capoeira here is a little and a lot different. It’s definitely a higher level of capoeira in Brazil because it's so much a part of the culture. More people are able to partake in it. It’s for the physical push, but it's not just physical. It's to immerse myself in the culture. To immerse myself in the language. I believe language is key to culture. Typically, it’s the first thing that colonizers have taken from us. And so I go there to learn Brazilian-Portuguese, which is for them a colonized language, but nonetheless is the language that is in relationship to capoeira. The songs are in Portuguese or Brazilian-Portuguese. And the movements are all in Portuguese. When you get a nickname, you get a Portuguese nickname. My nickname is Chumbinho, which is like a little piece of lead or a BB like in a BB gun.
I go there to be in the place. My favorite place there is Bahia. They say Brazil has the largest population of Africans of black people outside of Africa. And Bahia is the Mecca of Capoeira. I say it’s Blackland. That's where all the black people are, in Bahia. Northeastern Brazil is heavily saturated with African influence. So you get things like, Samba, Frevo, Maracatu, like here we have tap dance and jazz and blues here.
What's cool for me is that Bahia means Bay. A bianu means somebody from Bahia, somebody that's from the Bay. I'm not a bianu, to be clear, but I am from the Bay in the sense of the San Francisco Bay. I think that's kind of tight.
Hope Mohr:
Yeah. How is Capoeira different here in the States? How has the tradition morphed here?
Jarrel Phillips:
The form brings people together, regardless of where you are. When I go to Bahia, I see more Black people doing a capoeira, which is very key for me. Here, I don't see much of that. It’s more of a commodity here. Here it's clearly a situation with masters and students. I'm not downing that part. It's actually extremely important. But it’s an issue of access here that relates to race and intersects with class. Who can afford to go into these spaces? And then the individuals that are in these spaces, typically, once they're in them, it becomes a dominated space by whomever was there first. And so typically it's people that could afford to be there, not just monetarily, but also in relationship to time. They have the time. They can afford to give their time to be in these places. So, then often other people don't feel like they fit or belong. They don't feel comfortable in those spaces. So then you have a culture within a culture.
A lot of people here come for exercise as if it's just a physical thing. Their teachers’ job is to serve them. When there’s payment and service, there can be corruption of the form. It affects how the art gets passed down. In Capoeira you get people that come because they want to dance, you get people that come because they want to flip, you get people that come because they want to do martial arts. And then you get people that come for the culture, for the heritage. But you're not necessarily going to get the heritage all the time. Because not everybody wants to hear about the cultural heritage, especially when it comes to things that are very Black. Unfortunately in this society and in many ways, in this world, the idea of whiteness and blackness are tethered. And very much polarized. So anything spoken about Black often makes people go away. So that stuff isn't talked about the way it could and should be talked about.
Hope Mohr:
Can you talk more about the heritage of Capoeira? I know in part it's rooted in resistance to slavery.
Jarrel Phillips:
This is about folklore. Folklore is often something thought of as being in the past. Something becomes folkloric unless it stays current and relevant. Modern dance could one day become folkloric. Capoeira is adaptive in nature, just like B-boying and hip hop. It probably will never fully be folklore because it's always innovating and recreating itself. Capoeira has a very old history and comes from a very, very rooted place, but it's in many ways forever contemporary. Some people even say it's like the modern dance or contemporary of the martial arts. There's so much to it. There's the spirituality and the movement practices that are in relationship to the spirituality. There are the art forms that can be juxtaposed to Capoeira like maculele, samba, or batuque.
I know people like to say Capoiera was created by slaves who were trying to disguise their martial art. I imagine that there's an element to that. I imagine also that Capoeira was formulated even more after slavery. It depends on what we even mean by slavery. Slavery has manifested itself on people in different ways. That too continues to change.
I believe that Capoeira, even with its history of resistance, is joy. We play Capoeira. Just like dance, it allows you to transcend things. I mean transcend suffering or just the mundanity of everyday life. We look forward after work to do our capoeira or play. It is also aligning. Like dance, it allows you to align your spirit and your soul with your emotions and your body. It grounds you. It doesn't necessarily make you escape. It brings you even more here. And so, it is an art form of resistance. There’s a saying that I like: “resistance and freedom are two sides to the same coin".
Capoeira is push and pull. People say “give and take,” but I like to say, “give and give.” There’s a reciprocity to Capoeira. It's a circle. All the movements are reciprocal. We play in a circle. It’s a manifestation and an adaptation of values and traditions that our ancestors held and that we continue to create and recreate: the value of being together; the relationship between a student and the teacher; taking care of one another; how you dance with conflict; music and rhythm, storytelling through song and prayer. Ashe. Spirit. It's all of these things in one thing. And you play it.
Hope Mohr:
That's beautiful. Can you talk more about the elements of play and surprise in Capoeira? About Capoeira as an improvisational practice?
Jarrel Phillips:
This is all my perspective. I'm no authority.
Hope Mohr:
I don't know. I think you are.
Jarrel Phillips:
Trickery is key to Capoeira. The same way as being sneaky is fundamental to being a Ninja. In the United States, the trickster, for African Americans, the trickster is a hero. The trickster is so tricky that we often forget to take them seriously. There’s Br’er Rabbit. There’s Anansi the spider. The trickster is the god who talks to all the other gods. You can't get to the other gods without talking to the trickster first. The trickster sits at the crossroads. The trickster can do a power play with words. The trickster is the one that can outwit the biggest opponent, like David and Goliath.
I think Audre Lorde said, "you can't dismantle the master's house using the master's tools.” Yes and no.
Hope Mohr:
Say more about that.
Jarrel Phillips:
It depends on how much you associate the master’s tools to the master. How much you allow them to own those tools and how much we own the tools for ourselves. Words come in many forms: stories, hieroglyphs, poems and prose and verse, through song, through phrases, idioms, hyperbole, onomatopoeia. They're signs. They point to something inside. Words express consciousness. We can talk about the master's tools as being the English language. There’s the King's English over in Britain. But then you come here to the United States and you talk that very same language. It's different, different and the same. As a Black individual, words hold the nuance of my culture. Of our race, of our experiences, of sexuality. Everything is different and the same.
So I understand what Audre Lorde said about the master’s tools. Yes and no. The ability to create and recreate. To transform something. I believe that when you dance, when you move, when you enter into that circle and play Capoeira, when you're moving with the music, with that band of instruments, when you're moving in relationship to yourself and another individual, there's a transcendent space that you are a part of. I believe play in its essence is creativity. I believe play is more of an attitude or an approach. But play, like the trickster, can be anything and everything it needs to be and wants to be.
Hope Mohr:
Sometimes we forget to play. I forget.
Jarrel Phillips:
Sometimes your work is play. But we have to remember to play in other ways. So that play doesn't become work.
Hope Mohr:
Thanks so much for sharing your words and your thoughts and look forward to seeing you play Capoeira on October 9th. Thanks Jarrel.
Jarrel Phillips:
Likewise.