Olegário

Olegário Veridiano Moreira was a fisherman who lived in the village of Coroa on Ilha de Itaparica, an island across the Bay of All Saints from Salvador. He was the maternal grandfather of Norival Moreira de Oliveira (Mestre Nô), one of the most influential capoeira angola mestres in history.

Olegário was not a formal capoeira mestre. He was a pescador—a fisherman—as fishing was the way of life on the island. However, when he traveled to Salvador to sell his catch at the markets, he would watch the capoeira rodas taking place in the streets and waterfront areas of the city.

In 1949, when his grandson Norival was just four years old, Olegário began sharing what he knew of capoeira with the boy. Young Norival lived with his maternal grandparents—Olegário and his wife Joana Albertina Moreira—until he was approximately five or six years old. During this time, Olegário gave him his first exposure to the art, teaching him movements he had observed in the Salvador rodas.

As Mestre Nô himself later recalled: "My first instructions in Capoeira were given by my grandfather, Olegário. It was him who gave me the most incentive in this art of Capoeira". Though Olegário could not offer formal training in the manner of the city mestres, he "opened the door to the world of capoeira" for his grandson—a door that would lead Norival to become one of the most prolific teachers in capoeira history, graduating over 100 students to the rank of mestre.

In 1952, when Norival was seven, the family moved to Massaranduba in Salvador's Cidade Baixa, where the boy's formal training began with Mestres Nilton and Cutica. But the seed had been planted years earlier by his grandfather on the island, watching and learning in the informal way that characterized capoeira transmission before the era of formal academies.