Maculelê is a dance and a fight, which is made with sticks called”grimas” or with swards (facoes). Like capoiera, it is very nice to watch and its origin is African. Maculelê was probably first brought from the African Coasts by the first slaves, who arrived to Santo Amaro, Bahia. This festivities were made during the fests of “Nossa Senhora da Conceicao and of the 2nd February. The main person who spreaded Maculelê was Mestre Popó (Paulino Alnisio Andrade).

Mestre Popó is considered to be the father of Maculelê in Brazil, he was a great expert and spreaded it a lot. Thank to him the art of Maculelê gained a new face, although he was very criticized, he was able, to keep intact its essence and structure.

In Bahia as in the whole country, the constant presence of Africa, that settled the roots in the essence of the Bahian spirit, is due to the continuous arriving of enslaved black, who were natives of different parts of the African Continent.

Members of very different tribes were taken to Brazil: Angolans, Nagôs, Malês, Bantos, Mocambiques, etc, all these brought with them their own traditions and beliefs, transforming slavery into an exite in a new homeland, a new destiny and they contributed with their blood and costumes to the formation of the Brazilian People.

The African legacy in Bahia and in the whole country, which was iniciated in the times of slave-traffic, is present in the acute feeling of the dominance in our life and in the rythm of the way to look at things and in the lived tradition with the dominance of emotion. “The black emotion”, is shown by the remarkable statesman and poet from Senagal – Leopold Senhor, in the soruces of the fundaments of faith, which contains the common legacy of the habitants of Bahia and the old Brazilian people.