Mestre Sombra

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Roberto Teles de Oliveira, Mestre Sombra, was born on february 6, 1942, in Santa Rosa de Lima, in the Northeastern Brazilian state of Sergipe, in a family of petty shopkeepers.

He worked first in the building trade in Aracaju, capital town of the state, the in 1962 he moved to Santos, the great harbour of São Paulo, more than a thousand miles away. He worked odd jobs until 1968, when he was employed as a stevedor. In 1963, he had met a capoeira group called Bahia do Berimbau, lead by a 60-year old retired coffee worker born in Bahia, the Master Olímpio Bispo dos Santos. This group used to meet in Itapema (now Vicente de Carvalho), on the other side of the Santos Channel.

Only after Mestre Olímpio's death in 1972 they succeeded their move to the city of Santos, not without many difficulties, under the supervision of Sombra, who by the same sad event had been acknowledged a capoeira Master, as the rule went at that time. In 1974, they went to São Paulo, the capital state of the state 50 miles inland, to register
at the newly founded São Paulo state Capoeira Federation, after they had gone through the process of legalization of their group into an association bearing the name of Zumbi, that of the legendary war chief of the Maroon state Quilombo das Palmares, which resisted for nearly a century Portuguese domination in North-Eastern Brazil in the seventeenth century. In 1975, the association found its training place near the docks district of Santos, rua Bras Cubas, n. 227, where it has been ever since. It changed its name to Senzala, after the slave's quarters in the old-time plantations.

The Senzala academy has trained several generations of skilled capoeiristas, teachers and masters. Mestre Sombra's achievements has been known and apreciated in Santos and in the nearby, so much through countless capoeira shows and events the Senzala has participated in or organized as thanks to the new academies that the mestre's old students have set up in all neighbouhoods. The Capoeira schools in Santos have organised into the Liga Santista de Capoeira (Santos Capoeira League) of which Master Sombra is the chairperson. Mestre Sombra came to be Coordenador of the official Black Community Council in Santos.

In 1993, he retired from the Docks and ventured in the trade, opening a small shop selling clothes and capoeira things, the Bazar Senzala, a few hunded yards from the academy. Often he is called away to participate in capoeira events in Brasil, in Europe, in America, to help his former students in their teaching and maintain the link with them and their own students.

Master Sombra participated in the recording of two capoeira music CD's in Paris with Mestre Beija-Flor and recorded one in Santos with Mestre Bahia, both former students of his.