Mestre Ferreirinha de Santo Amaro

José Ferreira dos Santos, known as Mestre Ferreirinha de Santo Amaro, was a capoeira mestre from the Recôncavo Baiano who preserved and transmitted the Angola tradition of his teacher, Antônio Asa Branca.

Born in 1925, Ferreirinha arrived in Santo Amaro at age ten in 1935, fleeing an abusive stepfather. He came seeking work and never returned home. There, he found capoeira and his future mestre. He began learning with Antônio Asa Branca, a legendary proto-mestre of Santo Amaro.

Ferreirinha's stories about Asa Branca became part of capoeira oral history. "They say that Mestre Antônio Asa Branca played capoeira best when he was drunk," according to testimonies preserved in velhosmestres.com interviews. Ferreirinha would recount how, when sober, "you could do what you wanted with him," but when drunk "a merda pegava" (the shit would hit the fan). One famous story tells of Asa Branca in a street roda when a policeman ordered them to stop playing. Drunk, he said "Yes, we can." When the policeman pulled his weapon, Asa Branca delivered a hammer kick that sent the officer flying onto a wall seven palms high.

Ferreirinha himself became a towering figure in Santo Amaro's capoeira history. He knew Mestres João Pequeno and Pastinha personally, spending considerable time with the latter. "They were from the same period," noted his student M Ivan.

His teaching conditions were modest but prolific. Ferreirinha taught from his house—a space of only about three by three meters—yet he had many students. Both classes and rodas took place in that small space. At some point, the historian Dona Gilda helped him find a larger space at a local school, but she lost her job as director because the Mayor or Secretary of Education objected to "a negro coming into our school to do capoeira." After this incident, Ferreirinha continued teaching at home. A couple of years later, he spent one year teaching capoeira with the infantry in Santo Amaro.

Ferreirinha was a devout Catholic with an altar dedicated to Santo Antônio. Classes would begin with prayer—he would make offerings, light candles, and then start instruction. Despite his modest circumstances, he helped students who couldn't afford to pay, offering flexible payment arrangements.

He came from a family of carpenters and knew how to make atabaque drums, though he never sold them—"they weren't for sale."

His berimbau skills were legendary. Mestre Ivan, who trained under him for a decade beginning in 1976, testified: "Nobody could play berimbau like him."

In 1987, Ferreirinha was among the founding members of the Associação Brasileira de Capoeira Angola (ABCA), alongside Mestres João Pequeno de Pastinha, Paulo dos Anjos, Valdemar da Paixão, Boca Rica, Nô, René, Curió, Papo Amarelo, and Calazans. The ABCA became "o templo sagrado da capoeira angola" (the sacred temple of capoeira angola).

Ferreirinha was interviewed extensively by researchers documenting the velhos mestres of Bahia: by Mestres Itapoan, Luiz Renato, and Eziquiel on September 5, 1989; and by historian Matthias Assunção on September 5, 1994, and January 28, 1995 (these interviews remain unpublished). Audio recordings from a 1987 event also exist.

His students carried forward his legacy. Mestre Ivan de Santo Amaro trained under him for approximately a decade (1976-~1986) and later founded ACANA (Associação de Capoeira Aprender Netos de Angola—"Grandchildren of Angola") to preserve Ferreirinha's teachings. Mestre Macaco began training in the 1970s and became mestre by 1985; he would later lead ACARBO (Associação Cultural Acarbo), an organization with over 24 years of cultural work in the Recôncavo.

Mestre Ferreirinha de Santo Amaro died in 1998 at seventy-two years of age, leaving behind a lineage that continues to preserve the Angola tradition of Santo Amaro da Purificação.