“Capoeira è tudo o que a boca come” 

(Capoeira is everything the mouth can eat)

– Mestre Pastinha

This is the famous response of Mestre Pastinha, born Vicente Ferreira Pastinha (Salvador, 5 April 1889 – Salvador, 13 November 1981), to the questions posed to him 'about what Capoeira was'.

Capoeira is an art that has its roots in the colonial era.

Capoeira is dance, it is music, it is a struggle of resistance against the oppressor, whoever he may be.

It originates from the desire for freedom of African slaves, evolving as one of the most cunning forms of rebellion: 'in music, I preserve my culture, in dance, I hide the struggle'.

In the songs, they tell stories of pain, of the whip, of sugar canes whose taste is bitter.

But it is in those same songs, in that music, in the dance that moves the body, in the fight... that one becomes free again.

José Gabriel Góes was born in Santo Amaro da Purificação (Bahia), on March 19, 1930. He started Capoeira at the age of eight, and never graduated in Capoeira, out of conviction. “Capoeira never stops”, he says.

In 1938, really young, Gabriel started to learn capoeira with his father Eutiquio Goes and with his uncle Joao Catarino. With both of them, he practised capoeira up to 1942.

In 1947 he moved to Sao Bras where he continued to practice Capoeira with Mestre Leo', one of the most important Capoeristas of the Reconcavo Region of Bahia, a student of Mestre Messias. During his period in Sao Bras, Gabriel starts to work as a fisherman with his brother Carlos Goes. Eventually, in the same year, he moved to Salvador where he started to train with Mestre Cobrinha Verde. 

In this period in Salvador, he was noticed for his beautiful movements of capoeira and for his ability to play Berimbau by a few intellectuals among which Jorge Amado. This motivated him to start teaching Capoeira when he was only 17 years old. In this period in Salvador, the only Mestres of Capoeira with their own Academy were Bimba, Pastinha and Cobrinha Verde