Mestre Um-por-Um

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Nilton Machado de Almeida (Mestre Um-por-Um), was born in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, on february 20, 1957.

He began his aprenticeship in capoeira with master Diton in 1972, in the Salvador neighbourhood of Massaranduba. He recalls that the master was not very eager to admit him, thinking that he was very dumb and wouldn't learn. All the same, some time later he had to feel proud to see this student of his, this former street urchin that used to pay for his first lessons giving out a day's labour with the master on building works, doing so well in the roda.

A few years later, he entered Mestre Nô's academy, intending to earn a diploma for his capoeira abilities, which neither his master, nor Mestre Grande, with whom he trained some time too, could give him, because their academies had no formal registration. So he stayed five or six years in Mestre Nô's academy, Orixás da Bahia (now under the supervision of Master Dinelson). At this time, capoeira had already changed his life a lot, dipping him in a social life that he had not known of, earning him a little money through shows, encouraging him and giving means to study, so that he could afterwards enlist in the Police Force.

Capoeira in this time had tough challenges, but he dodged all traps, and in the end he began to teach. After a number of testing moments, he was acknowledged a master, and head of his Chapeu de couro academy, named after the leather hat of the Brazilian desert cow-boy, also the name of an acrobatic capoeira kick in which the foot flies in the air along the same round shape.

Now Mestre Um-por-Um is one of the relevant personalities of suburban capoeira in Salvador, in the line of those to whom capoeira is really an art, a school and a means of survival in a difficult social surrounding.