Lesson #1
When I'm asked what capoeira is, or what I think it is, I usually say this:
To me, it's a game played inside a groove.
I might expand on that and say it's a physical and musical game that combines elements of rhythm, song, fight, dance, acrobatics, and clowning.
There are two words for "play" in Portuguese. 1) Tocar (to play a musician instrument) and 2) Jogar (to play a game). You will have to bear with my rubbish written Portuguese.
Quando eu toco berimbau eu jogo capoeira tambem.
When I play (meaning 1) berimbau, I play (meaning 2) capoeira as well.
Eu toco piano. Eu jogo jazz.
Climb inside the groove. Play.
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Lesson #2
I was a total dunce at PE in school. I have been learning capoeira for 10 years. I'm still crap at it. I just don't care. Every tiny little scrap of improvement has been hard won. I can't spin on my little finger or do back flips. There are basic moves I still struggle with. I have been immensely lucky in training with teachers who have not made an issue out of the slow speed of my progress. If you'd told me 10 years ago that I'd be able to do some of the moves I can now do. I wouldn't have believed you. Part of me still doesn't.
I feel like a musical dunce a lot of the time and I have to work, methodically and slowly at lots of aspects of learning jazz piano. I have to apply all the resources of intelligence and persistence I can muster. I have, at best, a gift for picking up information and concepts quickly. But the actual execution of jazz improvisation in real time. I am toiling at every scrap of progress.
Age 18 I stopped playing piano. I had failed a violin exam and after that barely scraped passes in piano exams. Stage fright blocking my way. If you'd told me, 18 years ago, that I'd learn to improvise one day. I wouldn't have believed you. Two and a bit years ago I started a jazz course. I thought I might be able to learn enough about chords etc to be able to play something simple from chord symbols. It simply didn't occur to me that I might be able to improvise. Not even in my wildest dreams, my most passionately optimistic fantasies. It was simply something other people did. Not me. I got lucky again. I'd found another remarkable teacher.
I am by no means a fluent, competent, confident improviser. But I have already traveled so far in that direction that it makes my head spin. It shakes loose something in the fundamentals of who I think I am. This is exciting, and terrifying.
What seems impossible is sometimes only improbable. With hard work the improbable becomes more probable.
You do not have to be good at something to enjoy doing it.
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Lesson #3
Pay attention to how far you've come as well as how far you have to go. We focus, in music especially, on how much more there is to learn. On other players who are 'better' than us, or more advanced. We worry about the "Grade we're on". We want to play like our heroes. It's good to keep looking forward and upwards to want to be the best you can. But it's like climbing a mountain. You get up a steep slope and find a plateau and then another ridge beyond which is probably another plateau. The mountain is endless.
From time to time turn round and look back. Look back at how far away the base camp is now. Pause. Enjoy the achievement so far. Take in the view. Then, and only then, turn your attention back to the climb.
Pay attention to what you can do today that you couldn't do yesterday, or last week. Even the smallest thing.
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Lesson #4
You think you know, because someone tells you, or whatever, what capoeira is. You set off on a journey towards that thing. When you get there you hear that it's actually somewhere else. And so on and so on. And everybody tells you something different. Your picture is a composite. So is everyone else's.
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Lesson #5
Sometimes the stars get aligned. You find yourself completely in the moment. There is no past. There is no future. There is only the now and you, and the groove, and the friend you are playing. You have left your troubles behind. You see opportunities you wouldn't normally see. You find yourself doing moves you didn't know you could do. You are more than the sum of all your parts.
It hasn't happened when I've been playing the piano, yet. But I can see it in other musicians. I can hear it. I can taste it. It is something that happens, sometimes, where groove and improvisation meet. It has many names.
One of them, is freedom.
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