The Immersion Review - Stick Arts #2

VOL 1

Stick Arts ISSUE 2

Traditional and Modern: False Dichotomies

For the martial arts comprehensivist

Top - Mahesh Kumar Ramakrishna Bottom - Mestre Avelino & Mahipal Lunia

VOLUME 1

Stick Arts ISSUE 2

Traditional and Modern: False Dichotomies

118

92

Dr. Marco Quarta

Bethany J. Dillon

First Things First: The War Club in Native American Warrior Arts

The Italian Stick Fighting Tradition: A Journey from the Middle Ages to the Contemporary Era

138

52

Pedro Silva

JC Cabiero

The Pure Art of Angel Cabales Serrada ng Escrima

22 T. J. Desch-Obi, Ph.D

Grima: the Venezolano Moderno Style

Jogo do Pau and the Differences between Dueling and Group Combat

154 Vincent Tamer

(Post-Script) Strife and Folklore: Discovering the Rural Fighting Art of Jogo do Pau

40 Jorge Prina

Bonafont Argentine Cane Combat System: Combat with a Tango Flavor . . .

CONTENTS

Traditional and Modern: False Dichotomies

Vol. 1:2 - Stick Arts

182 Toby Cowern

Sticks: Branching Out

190 Henri-Robert Vilaire

The Art of Jo Jutsu

70 Mahesh Kumar Ramakrishna

Indian Lathi

14 Jigaba Bwaira

African Stick Fighting in Maguzawa/Hausa and Zulu Cultures

206 Stevan Plinck

The Staff in Pentjak Silat Sera

TRADITIONAL &

MODERN FALSE DICHOTOMIES WE WERE IN A SCHOOL HALL learning to tie knots for our Boy Scouts merit badges. As a ten-yearold kid, I just stared at my manual and twisted my piece of rope in all kinds of ways, trying to look busy and hoping nobody would notice I had no idea what I was doing. One of the older, cooler kids saw me flailing away uselessly and, with a smile, said to me, “Here, let me show you an easy way of tying a clove hitch.” He took my piece of rope and held it two in both hands, then, with a few quick, deft twists

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of his fingers, tied a clove hitch. I was impressed at his abilities and felt so good he actually would talk to me and not just sneer at my incompetence. He went over it with me a few times until I got it, and I felt good. I can tie a clove hitch, and an older guy likes me. “Why are you teaching that kid that?

That won’t work!” I looked up and, for the first time, noticed an older overweight man in his 60s sitting in a fold-up chair about ten feet from me. The teenager responded with a smile, “What do you mean?

From the Editors

This is the best way to tie a clove hitch!” “How are you going to do that to a tree with a 20-foot diameter? What good is teaching that kid when you have to tie a clove hitch to a big tree?” The teenager just shrugged his shoulders and walked away. The old man looked at me and said, “C’mere kid, I’ll show you how we used to tie knots. I’ll show you how to tie knots like a lumberjack. Put your arm up! Now watch, you got to throw the rope around the tree and catch it on the other side like this,” he said as he gently tossed the rope around my bony forearm, cinched it up, and tied a nice clove hitch. “This is how you do it out in the forest.” Then he showed me a timber hitch and told me a story about how, when he was young, he used to cut and haul logs from a forest. I was in heaven! A

real lumberjack was teaching me how to tie real lumberjack knots. I left with a swollen head and a smile like a Cheshire Cat. Let’s fast- forward 25 years, and I’m cutting trees and dragging them through the Amazon rainforest. I remembered what that old man said, as I threw my rope around some trees that I just cut and pulled trees down to the river and lashed them together to make a raft. My girlfriend at the time looked at me like I was Crocodile Dundee, Daniel Boone, and MacGyver all rolled up into one.

Or at least that is what I think she thought as she watched me. ‘Tradition! These old guys knew what they were doing,’ I thought to myself. This works a lot better than twirling your fingers to make a knot. However, to be honest, while the old ways worked best this time,

From the Editors | 5

they are not always the best option.

What matters for someone faced with a challenge in their everyday life such as a violent encounter is to successfully emerge from the situation in a way that can be judged as victorious. That is what matters, not whether one best relies on traditional or modern means.

From an evolutionary hoplological viewpoint, the body, in conjunction with material technology occurring within specific environments, has adapted itself over the last 50,000 years to push, pull, throw, or launch objects or jump and run in efficient and effective ways. How these fundamental principles of movement manifest themselves is contingent upon

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what a culture feels is appropriate, right, and normal, the technology available at the time, and the individual’s potential to enact these moves. With this understanding, a hoplologist’s concern is not with what is traditional or modern. Instead, a hoplologist looks at how people continually draw upon what is considered traditional and what is identified as modern to successfully engage in combative acts. In such an inquiry, questions arise such as: What factors led some arts to persist and others to die out, and others to change radically? Among those arts that have persisted, what has been preserved? What are some of the reasons an art has changed, and how has this change manifested itself

in the art? Or, how is the art being used by those practicing it today?

In the second release of the Immersion Review, eleven highly trained martial artists explore the connections and disjunctures between what has been called “traditional” and “modern” through their personal practice of their arts.

First, turning our eyes to specific communities, the reader is introduced to three warrior cultures from the continent of Africa. In each place, the ethos of the warrior and learning the traditional modalities of combat in a modern world is valued and treated as a relevant and enduring method of preparing young men to withstand the vagaries of a modern world. While an incredible amount of knowledge about African history has come to light, the history of Africans in the Americas is still yet to be known.

Many Africans that came to the Americas with the first European ships were conquistadores, free servants, sailors, and slaves. Many of them took off to the interior, where they created independent communities and forged alliances and trading relationships with Indigenous peoples and different European communities to maintain their freedom. Other times, these communities isolated themselves

to such a degree that they came to the attention of coastal elites only in the 1990s. Arising out of the struggle to build themselves new lives was the development of a number of combative traditions that are still unknown to those interested in martial arts. Dr. Desch-Obi has kindly shared with us a few lines about one school of the 30 schools of Afro-Colombian grima open today out of what must have been dozens 50-75 years ago.

Here he gives the reader a history of the origins, development, tactics, and some of the life histories of practitioners of the school of venezolano moderno.

Staying in the New World, around the same time that the wild west frontier in North America was coming to an end and the cowboy was being turned into a ranch hand, similar social and political conditions were occurring down South. Between the Rio de Plata and Parana Rivers, the once immense grasslands of the pampas where men and wild cattle could roam free were slowly being fenced off by barbed wire and privatized.

The wild gauchos who once owed allegiance to no-man, no-god, and no-law, were reduced to scrambling for temporary paid labor to ward off starvation and poverty.

From the Editors | 7

Forced to move to urban areas, they competed with hordes of immigrants fleeing poverty and political repression in Europe and the Ottoman empire. Many of them ended up working in newly established industrialized abattoirs set up to process and export beef in refrigerated ship-holds worldwide.

In this mix of rural and urban, native and immigrant, traditional and modern, Jorge Prina writes of the new cultural forms arising from the blend of the old and the new, and new ways of fighting emerging from this jumble of people, technologies, and times. Then, the ever-reclusive JC Cabiero channels the spirit of Angel Cabales in his fascinating article on serrada.

Some authors here, by contrast, have cast their gaze wide to examine the combative traditions that once created empires, fought off neighboring enemies, or resisted the onslaught of colonialism. In these articles, the reader can get a hint of how the past still informs and shapes the minds and bodies of practitioners today as they draw on traditional weapons to make sense of and deal with age-old issues in a modern world. Asana Mahesh Ramakrishna, while ostensibly identifying the use of the staff—or lathi—in the combative traditions of India, provides a fas-

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cinating overview of the wealth of indigenous combative traditions still extant in India today. Only recently, the Immersion Foundation has been able to open these doors to outsiders that have been closed for so long. Stay tuned for further work on this part of the world.

Moving across the Atlantic to the New World, Bethany June Dillon takes us on a historical panoramic journey across the Americas and through time to marvel at the wealth, diversity, and long history of the weapons developed by indigenous peoples: how they armed themselves, trained their youth, and fought a range of rivals and enemies, and how these old ways are adapted and used to navigate a modern world.

In the same vein, Dr. Marco Quarta provides a panorama of armed combative traditions from all over the Italian peninsula. Beginning back in the Middle Ages, Dr. Quarta introduces the reader to paintings and instructional manuals proving the existence of an old, wide, and varied approach to fighting with sticks used up and down the peninsula. Bringing us up through the present, Dr. Quarta presents some of the prominent exponents of stick/blade fencing and the schools they began that one may still train in today. Then

going down into the rural Mezzogiorno, we learn about the wealth of secret societies dedicated to the pursuit of protecting or exploiting one’s community, who still operate and have lately opened their doors to strangers and hosted modern competitions.

Changing levels, so to speak, we dive into a hoplological or pragmatically oriented exploration of the pragmatic corporeal knowledges, developed in conjunction with material technologies designed to overcome those who would stand in one’s path. There are fans of MMA who proudly boast the Octagon is the best place to judge an art’s practicality.

I would suggest the point has merit but fails to consider how people actually fought in the past and still fight today under a range of circumstances—situations where the attributes learned in the Octagon are not always the most relevant or practical. No matter how many social media masters say differently, ambuscades, mass attacks being chased down streets and through alleys by groups of armed men, have been the way many people since time immemorial have experienced violence. In the mountains and down in the river valleys of northern Portugal, this was a real everyday concern up until 50 years ago. From a rural hard-working people determined to maintain

From the Editors | 9

their land and dignity in the face of all who sought to take them away, the art of jogo do pau emerged and has persisted until today. Looking at today’s reduction of martial arts to one-on-one encounters, Pedro Silva describes some of the strategic and tactical issues between one-on-one combat and massfights in their numerous configurations with just a humble stick for protection.

Then, coming from a modern Special Forces background, Toby Cowern looks at the multiple attributes a simple stick possesses and how it can aid one in a wide range of challenges one may encounter in everyday life.

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From here, we are taken back to two Asian traditions, one derived from the military elite of feudal Japan and the other from Java’s laboring and elite classes. Befitting an organized, hierarchical, and literate society, Sensei Vilaire provides a list of principles, weapons, and ways of using different lengths of sticks as taught in the kaze arashi ryu.

Writing of the West Javanese art of silat sera, Stevan Plinck provides an overview of his art through the concept of base-angle-leverage to maneuver any sized weapon in any situation one may come across.

What all these authors have recognized is that the traditional is not a moribund museum piece suitable for folkloric exhibits, nor does it hold all the secrets of combat. Neither is it true that the modern is merely a hodgepodge of moves taken from a few different styles and called something new; or alternatively, that the modern is a more scientific, effective, and efficient way of doing things. Our bodies have not changed too dramatically since the Neolithic Revolution that led to the beginning of settled villages, the domestication of animals and crops, and the need to acquire more or defend the property that one had. In this struggle, new technologies and new tactics were continuously introduced. Training the youth to prepare for combat in settled areas led to a plethora of unarmed and armed fighting styles of various forms of lethality and ways of training or practicing to prepare the youth for their expected obligations as warriors.

Weapons change, rules of engage-

ment change, but there are a limited number of ways to use the body either offensively or defensively to maximize a move’s power, efficiency, and efficacy. Sticking to Western unarmed combative arts, such moves as “Ruby Robert” Fitzsimmons solar plexus punch, Jack Dempsey’s falling step punch, or Lancashire’s holding head in chancery, are bread-and-butter moves that have withstood the test of time. They are often forgotten and reintroduced time and time again to upcoming generations who find them useful. Each generation trains many of the same moves as those who came before them, because it works. What martial artists, warriors, and fighters have always sought out is a way to move the body in conjunction with material technology that is effective, efficient, and judged by one’s community as the proper way to take a guy out. And it is within this pragmatic logic that the traditional and the modern lie.

Michael J. Ryan, Ph.D Managing Editor

Mahipal Lunia Executive Editor

From the Editors | 11

MEET THE TEAM CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Mahipal Lunia Explorer-in-Residence, The Immersion Foundation Executive Editor, The Immersion Review @theimmersionfoundation

@immersion.foundation

http://www.therenaissancepath.com http://www.theimmersion.foundation

Michael J. Ryan, Ph.D Managing Editor @michael.j.ryan.54

@garrotero1

https://binghamton.academia.edu/MichaelRyan

PEER REVIEWERS Juha A. Vuori, Ph.D Michel Farivar, MD Consulting Editors

PRODUCTION Hana Shin Editor & Producer

John Rutledge Production Assitant

The Immersion Review, founded by The Immersion Foundation, is a conduit for penetrating insights in combat and combative behavior. It is a space for the dedicated martial artist, who dares to seek ideas from diverse fighting systems.

The Immersion Review is a peer-reviewed journal for the martial arts comprehensivist.

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AFRICAN STICK FIGHTING IN MAGUZAWA / HAUSA & ZULU CULTURES Jigaba Bwaira

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WE ARE AN ORGANIZATION called Mukhanda International; we research and practice African martial arts both in Africa and the African diaspora, such as the Caribbean, North and South America, and ancient black peoples in Asia, e.g., Negritos in modern Thailand.

This article will explore African stick fighting among the Maguzawa/Hausa and Zulu cultures, together with is’cima or the Zulu empty-hand combat never seen outside of Africa, and Kadiya Maguzawa or Hausa stick fighting, as seen in the context of an older and broader Maguzawa/Hausa martial culture. Finally, we will conclude with a brief discussion of stick fighting in Rwanda.

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MAGUWAZA / HAUSA

The Gangi Brotherhood The Gangi brotherhood is a pre-Islamic pre-Christian Maguzawa/ Hausa warrior society. Wasan gangi is the Hausa sword fighting system done with one or two swords enabling a Hausa warrior to fight multiple opponents. Kadiya is Hausa stick/sword fighting and done with a long staff or a stick/ sword in each hand. Kokawa or combat grappling, was once part of the grappling aspect of dambe, the fist-fighting and kicking sport; even though both arts have separated, only the Gangi brotherhood practice the complete system. Yan tauri is the generic name for Hausa armed combat, including swords, sticks, knife, and empty hand counters to armed attacks. Sword skills among peoples such as the Ashanti, Yoruba, Nupe, and Nagasawa/Hausa are legendary, and their reputation for armed skills continues into the present.

The Gangi brotherhood still practices an older, rougher form of dambe that relies on the use of

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knees, elbows, headbutts, and grappling in its repertoire. Today, grappling has split off from dambe and is known as kokawa.

However, for those of the Gangi brotherhood, it is still part of dambe. Dambe damisa is also known as leopard boxing because, up until the recent past, fighters would at times wrap their strong-side punching hand in a cloth dipped in resin glue or honey and then cover the wraps with shards of broken glass. Alternatively, men could fight with their punching hand with a type of knuckle-duster to increase the power of their blows.

Men could also fight with wrist knives or shanci. The kadiya stick, sword, and knife fighting arts are all still the preserve of the Gangi brotherhood. When one joins the Gangi warrior association, they are taught these fighting arts in addition to the pre-Islamic Maguzawa spirit system called Bori, which is similar to Yoruba Ife.

Kadiya Stick Fighting As mentioned before, yan tauri is the generic name for Hausa armed combat systems. A sub-art of yan tauri is a form of stick fighting, or kadiya, done either with a single stick or with a stick in each hand.

In the past, kadiya was used to train warriors to handle swords and was also a civilian self-defense weapon.

Even now in 2019, in Hausa land, Nigeria, people still carry sticks as protection. And kadiya is still used for self-defense and as a local recreational activity. As a recreational pastime, kadiya takes place as full contact stick matches occur with no body armor, but just one’s skill and fast reflexes to protect oneself.

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ZULU WARRIOR CULTURE & MARTIAL ARTS Impi Embovu Impi embovu is the spear/shield system created by Shaka Zulu.

The umkhonto is the spear, and the shield is ihawa or isihalangu.

There are many ways to use this combination of weapons. Ukubhula is to strike the enemy on his face with a shield. Following this is ukuhlaba ngenhlabelo, referring to the ubhoko or the long rod in the center of the shield, used for stabbing at the enemy’s ankles, feet, and shins. Ukuvika is a technique to block with a shield by holding it in different positions. Ukugqema or ukugqimuzana are techniques of striking with the spear and clubs used in war. Learning these techniques occurred via a war dance called ukugiya. Ukugiya is the solitary display of fighting against an imaginary opponent. It is similar to shadow boxing done in Western arts and solo forms done in Asian arts. In this case, it is purely African. Apart from ukugiya, Zulu warriors practiced impi embovu by charging against

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each other with blunted spears to habituate the warrior to the clash of arms with an enemy. Zulu warriors also have an empty-hand system, variously known as isibakela, amanqindi, or amankomane. All these names refer to Zulu methods of empty-hand fighting, relying on headbutts, knees, elbow, grappling throws, and kicks. Bone-breaking techniques, pressure point strikes, and chokes are also part of the repertoire.

Zulu warriors also practiced their martial arts by doing the ukugiya war dance, showing their kicking prowess that would serve them well in combat. Techniques used included the front kick, side kick, and roundhouse kick. These kicks were part of the impi embovu as well as isibakela, Zulu fist-fighting that was popular as far back as the late 18th century when the legendary emperor of the Zulu Empire, Shaka Zulu, was born. It’s interesting to note that the front kick, sidekick, and low roundhouse

kick are also typical in the African combative games of ’ngolo from Angola, dambe in Nigeria, and by extension, capoeira and other African-derived martial arts in the Americas. A British soldier in the Anglo-Zulu wars of 1879 wrote in his journal how a front thrust kick from a Zulu warrior had knocked him flat on his back, breaking a couple of ribs in the process.

ty-hand-translated stick fighting techniques. Please note in Sotho that push kicks to the opponent’s lower legs, stomach, and rib cage are part of stick fighting.

Is’cima: Zulu Empty-Hand Combat Stick fighting techniques can be translted into bare-hands applications. When Zulu men faced a ban prohibiting them from carrying induku sticks in nearby urban areas, they transposed stick fighting techniques to empty-hand variations. At some point, it became known as is’cima or “off switch,” probably because during a fierce stick fight, one does get their lights switched off with a strike to the head (a K.O.), hence the name.

Other tribes like the Sotho and Xhosa also have variations of emp-

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Conclusion From the Maguzawa/Hausa in Nigeria to the Banyarwanda peoples in Rwanda, and onto the Zulu of South Africa, African martial arts are found in every corner of the continent but remain largely unknown to outsiders. Who, for example, knows of the mfuh warrior society, the army of the Nso peoples from the northwest region of Cameroon, West Africa? The mfuh warrior society came together to protect the Nso people during their long migrations over the centuries. In charge of protecting the Fondom traditional ruler of the Nso, mfuh warriors relied on the nyui.

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GRIMA THE VENEZOLANO MODERNO STYLE

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T. J. Desch-Obi, Ph.D

“MORE EXTENSION ON YOUR ATTACKS!” directed Maestro Nabor as he instructed my partner Lucy and I through an educational sequence of venezolano moderno, the most recent of all Colombian grima styles. These two-person fight choreographies were the basic method by which Afro-Colombians had been trained to stick fight for well over two centuries.

The techniques and approaches to combat taught in such sequences depended heavily upon the style being studied. The more than thirty styles of grima could be organized into five categories based on historical depth and taxonomy of range, tactics, and strategies. In previous publications, I have outlined some of the characteristics of the numerically dominant classical and neo-classical styles of grima. This brief article will explore the history and practice of the most recent branch of grima—the tulueño moderno family of styles— through an oral history of the two most prolific living masters of venezolano moderno.

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Grima was the umbrella term used

by Afro-Colombians to encompass a range of distinct martial arts styles that utilized the stick, lance, machete, or unarmed body for attack, and corporal dexterity for defense. At the heart of this complex was the use of the stick as the initial training weapon in the vast majority of grima styles. The oldest lineages of grima are unanimous in distinguishing their arts of grima from esgrima, or fencing.

The latter, they say, is a Spanish term for European sword fighting, while their arts built on the use of the stick and machete are properly called “grima.” It is possible that this distinct terminology was linked to the Afro-Brazilians term grima meaning “fighting sticks,” and thus a parallel to the Venezuelan stick fighting arts referred to collectively as garrote, or “stick.”

The classical styles of grima date back to the time of slavery in Colombia and appear to have been first developed in the country’s southeastern area, also known as the Pacific region. In the region that is now Colombia, gold min-

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ing was the primary driver of the economy. As mines were stripped, miners continued to move south as mines peaked along the Atlantic coast, the Caribbean coast of northern Antioquia, and then by the 18th century, in the Pacific region. Enslaved peoples frequently attempted to run away from their enslavers and became maroons, self-liberated individuals who formed a series of communities outside of areas controlled by the Spanish. By the late 18th century, references appear to the fighting capacities of the maroons and their preoccupation with dueling.

The oldest lineages of grima styles trace back to the areas of such communities. These classical grima styles appear distinctive from earlier African Atlantic stick fighting arts such as the kalinda of the circum-Caribbean, particularly in terms of their educational system.

While older grima styles maintained vestiges of the double-hand method of using a stick as found in kalinda, these were incorporated into a distinctive grima educational system based upon two-person choreographies.

After the abolition of slavery in Colombia in 1851, the conservative party launched a civil war aimed at toppling the liberal government and re-establishing slavery in the country. Afro-Colombians rushed to the liberal side and became the backbone of the liberal army, defeating the conservatives and ensuring the end of slavery. For the rest of the second half of the nineteenth century, Afro-Colombians

continued to play a large role in the military abilities of the liberal party. The most feared of these were the grima experts known as Negros Macheteros. These Afro-Colombian grima experts fought with stick and machete, frequently transforming their sticks into more lethal implements by adding a blade at one end. There were many local and national conflicts between the liberals and the conservatives. The

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most devastating was the Guerra de los Mil Dias—The War of a Thousand Days—that raged from 1899 to 1902. Herbert Spencer Dickey, a North American doctor working in Colombia, described the psychological effect of Negros Macheteros in the conflict. Dickey emphasized that the use of rifles in this conflict was largely ineffective due to poor training, limited ammunition, and the lack of uniform armament. Rather, the real carnage was the result of special companies who fought exclusively with arme blanche—cutting, thrusting, and percussive weapons. The most skilled macheteros hailed from the Cauca Valley of the Pacific region and neighboring Tolima. In both regions, there were special companies led by renowned grima experts such as Cinesio Mina, Tulio Varón, and General Ramón El Negro Marin. Even as late as the 1930s in Colombia’s conflict with Peru, Colombia’s antiquated guns were no match for Peru’s modernized army and weapons. In desperation, the government called in 1932 for the formation of a new battalion of macheteros, who successfully stormed the enemy’s encampment in the battle of Tarapacá. The majority of grima styles emerged over

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the time from 1851 to 1932 when they were militarily important, yet all these styles were fundamentally civilian in nature.

In the Afro-Colombian communities after abolition, individuals learned grima for entertainment and self-protection. Grima stick fighting games were a widespread pastime in the rural communities, where most people worked on private fincas, or small scale farms or sugarcane plantations. Stick fighting was a competitive but friendly form of entertainment that often accompanied drinking. Workers on cattle ranches or sugarcane plantations similarly played grima with sticks in their work breaks as a form of entertainment.

One popular game in certain areas was a tournament style with the loser of the competition having to pay for the bottle of alcohol that the participants enjoyed during the game. Many exponents of grima, also known as grimistas, also learned the art in order to protect themselves at work and in social conflicts if the need arose. Potential students had a wide range of styles to choose from, the most recent being the tulueño moderno long-range styles.

Venezolano Moderno: History & Practice Around the turn of the 20th century, a new family of grima styles was emerging—the tulueño moderno styles of relancino moderno, juego de compass, and venezolano moderno. This family of styles emphasized stick play more than the majority of neo-classical grima styles, which were primarily blade-focused. The original tulueño style, relancino moderno, was created by an Afro-Colombian family—the Valencias—in the tiny community of Caimos near Tulúa.

Their family art integrated some defensive strategies from relancino, the body position and foot-

work of español, and the counter-striking of the sombra style into a unique approach to combat. Disciples of this system later went on to develop two new variants—the juego de compass, which added an emphasis on extended footwork, and venezolano moderno, which purportedly combined relancino moderno with elements from Venezuelan garrote. Yet both styles are primarily derivative of relancino moderno and—apart from the two-handed staff techniques found in the juego de compass—virtually indistinguishable in terms of style of play. Practitioners of these styles

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preferred to play at long range with a stick in each hand and target their strikes to the opponent’s attacking arm rather than block, which had been the custom in the classical styles of grima. The new family of arts remained isolated in the region surrounding Caimos for decades. Then in the late 1940s, a civil crisis known as La Violencia led to armed conflicts between liberal and conservative forces that made life in the region difficult.

Entire communities had to flee to safe havens, including Palmira on the far side of the Cauca River. The tulueño moderno styles spread inland with these migrants to Palmira, where venezolano moderno rose to prominence through the work of the prolific masters, Maestro Nabor Rojas and Maestro Jose Quevedo.

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Maestro Nabor was born in a small community called Galicia to parents Antonio Maria Para y Maria Blanca Rojas. His father, Antonio Maria, was an adept of the classical relancino style of grima, and Nabor and his brothers came up with the desire to learn themselves. His aunt’s husband, Tomas Alvares, agreed to pay for the tuition so that at the age of eleven, Nabor could begin his first formal grima training with the Angel brothers—Pedro, Luis, and Marcos who taught the español style. Unlike most schools that began students with sticks or wooden machetes, in this school, they began right away with a stick and a live machete. However, Nabor’s training ended on his second day of training with Maestro Marcos.

“

He asked me if I was ready, and I said, I am. I organized myself with my stick and machete in a good stance and waited for him to give me [an educational choreography] like he had done the day before . . . when instead I felt a blow from his machete and saw a part of my hat floating away like a bird. I took up the piece of hat and marched out to show my uncle . . . .”

Nabor’s uncle, himself an expert in relancino, confronted the master and defeated Marcos in a duel, which brought Nabor’s training in the español style to an end. After this, Nabor’s family moved to Palmira to escape La Violencia. There, Nabor and his brother met Maestro Ramon, who first introduced the tulueño style of venezolano moderno into the rest of Colombia.

Maestro Ramón Aguilera learned venezolano moderno at a very young age in the area around Caimos. In 1936, he had attained the rank of maestro at just sixteen years of age. Maestro Ramón became an itinerant grima instructor and opened grima academies in Chocó, Quindio, Tolima, and Cundinamarca. He returned to his

hometown to fulfill his military service, then worked for two years in the police force before returning to his life as a grima instructor. In the escalating violence of La Violencia, Maestro Ramón fought in many lethal street altercations: “They sought him out because of jealousy; because although he was a young man, in the games when he played grima, he hit everyone a lot. So, a number of rivals developed jealousy and said if they couldn’t deal with him playing [grima], they would deal in real fights. So, they sought battles with him . . . for this reason, he had to come here . . . in order to not have to fight so much.”

When Nabor saw Maestro Ramón’s game, he and his brother were immediately convinced that this was the style for them.

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Their training began in a community outside Florida called San Antonio de Caballero, or more popularly, Chicharros. Maestro Ramón taught them in the afternoons from Monday to Saturday when they were finished working on the sugar plantation, Maria Luisa.

Students of his generation made a contract for the entire course for 125 pesos, paid at the rate of 2 pesos per week when the plantation employees averaged around 20 pesos per week. In Ramón’s academy, Wednesdays were set aside for theory. “On Wednesdays, he didn’t give a [physical] class; the teaching on Wednesdays was pure theory, pure strategy . . . . He made a circle of the disciples and walked around them with his glasses on and off dictating . . . how to enter a house, how to leave a house, how to get down, how to best get back up; everything was strategic, he had a tremendous teaching of theory.”

At the core of this theory was the concept of malicia, or cunning.

Malicia was a strategy found throughout all grima styles as well as other African diasporic martial arts such as capoeira and garrote. Malicia was more than just a collection of tricks; it was an African-Atlantic philosophy that taught the weak how to overcome

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their oppressors. This philosophy was personified by the Western African trickster heroes such as the hare and the spider, who overcome their stronger rivals via tricksterism. These African tales were passed down in Colombia, where Anansi, or spider, and tio conejo, or uncle hare, were celebrated for overcoming larger, stronger animals through malicia. Grima masters taught their disciples various practical aspects of malicia, including how to walk around a corner to prevent ambush, how to safely exit a building, and how to overcome an opponent whose physical skills outmatch one’s own. The other

five days were dedicated to the physical components of the art.

The venezolano moderno curriculum was generally broken up into three or four compendiums.

The first was a series of nineteen or twenty choreographies called classes. These two-person choreographies taught students the fundamental strikes, defenses, and footwork patterns of the art.

The second compendium was the defensive practice called ronda.

Here, the student had to apply all the defenses learned in the choreographed sequences, to attacks that would now come without a set order. The ronda was designed

to teach the student to defend himself, first unarmed against attacks with a stick, then with stick against stick, and finally integrating machetes and knives as well.

The third compendium was the juego de malicia, or game of trickery. “This is a feigned fight between two contenders—or you hit me, or I hit you.” While the first and second compendiums emphasized dexterity and defense, respectively, the juego de malicia now introduced the strategy and practice of creating and attacking an opponent’s openings. These open sparring sessions were usually practiced with each exponent typically having a stick in each hand. The practice sticks were made of a wood called guasimo that was lightweight to avoid serious injuries. Students first trained in the more supportive atmosphere among their cohort. Later, they would have to test their skills against students from other schools.

Grima academies regularly traveled to have encounters with other schools. These were at times friendly exchanges but on other occasions designed to test rival grima styles or even rob students from other academies.

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“

There were a lot of academies and a lot of rivalry in the game, so we had to travel to other parts and other schools here, in Tulua, Andalucia, Cali, Pradera, Florida, Candelaria . . . we circled all these towns. In almost every neighborhood [of these towns], there were schools and there were stick battles. If it wasn’t in one part, it was in another.”

These meetings often began with formal invitations. “The master wrote a letter, and it was signed by two or three disciples as witnesses, then the other master responded in a like manner, and they established dates and venues for the encounters.” Once at the event, the visiting master would first make a presentation of his students, then the hostmaster would present his students. There was often a time for dialogue and exchange between the two styles, particularly when they had different styles.

“My masters would often say to the other master, ‘Show us your art,’ so they would show us some of what they call cruza or paradas—educational choreographies—like the angel parada, the spider parada,

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the drunkard parada, etc.” But the heart of the encounters was always the juegos de malicia.

These games would begin with friendly matches between students of the two schools. The rounds in these encounters lasted for five minutes—whatever you could accomplish in those minutes, whether you touched or didn’t touch him. But all was friendly and polite, always shaking hands and offering each other luck in the game.

The game took place inside a ring.

The ring size varied by school and style, often around 3 square meters, and almost never more than 4 square meters. Drinks usually accompanied these encounters.

“There was never a lack of liquor

as we didn’t play drinking soda, just pure sugarcane liquor, beer, etc. This always warmed up the games, as there were always a few who were susceptible . . . and they went from the heart of a pigeon to the heart of a lion.” Both for the alcohol and the desire to not lose face in front of students, the most heated matches were usually the games between masters. These were normally also with practice sticks, but at times were played with machetes instead. Thus, masters often entered such matches with spiritual protections called ventajas, or advantages.

When work on the sugarcane plantation in Florida dried up around 1963, Maestro Ramón moved the academy to Palmira, where he

rotated his time between three locations he had secured in the neighborhoods of Obrero, San Calletano, and San Pedro. After five years, Nabor had become a contra-maestro, or assistant instructor. When Maestro Ramón opened schools in other towns, Nabor would be left in charge of the academies in Palmira. “I was serving as contra-maestro for five years; [Maestro Ramón] didn’t come during the week because he had other academies in the municipality of Pradera, so he was busy there, and I was teaching here. He only came Saturdays in the afternoon—the day that all the disciples form the three localities got together—so that he could check how they were progressing.”

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Nabor excelled in the academy but felt challenged when it came time to teach on his own. “And for five years I was there acting as contra-maestro, but he also wanted me to teach on my own . . . . But I was afraid to take on all that responsibility because in those days the game was very rough. There was a lot of competition between rival schools, and masters from other academies wanted to come by and destroy the school [through challenge matches].”

So Nabor only began teaching in secret. His first disciple, Teofilo Becerra, completed the first compendium around 1966. He presented this first student to Maestro Ramón, who approved of his student and encouraged him to take on more students. So Nabor took on his first cohort of clandestine students and eventually opened his own academy. When he presented them at the Saturday reunion of all of Maestro Ramón’s disciples, Nabor was formally declared a master, and his academy would become one of the two largest in the region. The other was led

by Maestro José Quevedo.

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Los Gavilanes José Quevedo was born in Palmira in 1949. As a very young boy, some friends of his took him to watch a grima master teaching a student in a nearby backyard, and from there, his interest was piqued. Later, when he was a teenager, some friends who played grima began to instruct José in a bit of the venezolano moderno game. When he was 15, he traveled with them to meet their maestro, Luis Arturo A.K.A. Pucho Cruz, also from the epicenter area around Caimos. Maestro Pucho, already matured well into his sixties, accepted young José as a student in his academy where José traveled every weekend for training for five years.

After completing his training, José had to pass through a grueling test to become a formal graduate. In Don Pucho’s academy, the entrega was a graduation testing ceremony that required the participation of around four other masters.

“When they are ready to graduate someone, the pure masters get together to give an objective look at the disciple to decide if he is ready or if he is still lacking a bit, in which case they may say that he is still lacking and needs two or three months to work on [some aspect of the art].”

As in other lineages, José had to demonstrate his mastery of the twenty cruzas and two rondas where he had to defend himself against a machete and knife, respectively, and face each of the masters with sticks. In addition to these three elements found in all schools of venezolano moderno, the lineage of Don Pucho also contained a fourth component to the curriculum: the pandilla, or gang attack. This was a difficult form of play in which the disciple had to spar against four individuals at the same time. This was no easy feat and might have to be done with any weapon. “[In the pandilla,] there was a concept of the masters that they laid out four sticks, four machetes, and knives. The person who was going through the entrega said to the masters, ‘Master, you choose what you would like to play me with.’

They would say, ‘Fine, let’s play with [sticks, machetes, or knives].’

In these entregas, it was different than in training; in training, you used plastic or wooden knives, but for the entrega, live knives were used in order to know if you could defend yourself for real or not.”

Five years after he began his formal training with Don Pucho, José passed his entrega, giving him the authorization to take on students of his own.

Maestro José went on to pass on his art to hundreds of students in the area of Palmira. Rather than establish a private academy, Maestro José, along with his seven brothers and few close colleagues, established Los Gavilanes—The Hawks— a large collective academy. The first location for the Gavilanes was on 14th Street where there was a permanent training ring 4 meters wide. After ten years, the academy moved to another building in the Obrero neighborhood, and then after another ten years moved to the San Pedro location, which remains an active academy.

Like other schools of grima, Maestro José and colleagues took their students to play with their masters throughout the region in closeddoor encounters.

The Gavilanes also spread the fame of their school by demonstrating their art openly. While his master’s generation was generally secretive about their knowledge and didn’t openly advertise their academies, the Gavilanes did numerous shows at the community fairs that took place in the wider region. At these festivals, they also organized tournaments open to anyone who wanted to compete, but also formally invited known academies.

These public tournaments generally provided each competitor with a dull machete. Competitors were required to wear white shirts, and the machetes were treated to leave marks on the competitors’ clothes so that there would be fewer arguments due to fighters denying that they had been hit. Between public performance and tournaments, the Gavilanes openly attracted many students.

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The tulueño moderno family of grima styles began with relancino moderno in the region of Caimos around the turn of the century.

By the 1920s, the style had evolved into two other variants that shared the same style of play. The homeland of these arts became the site of intense bloodshed during La Violencia, leading many families to travel inland to Palmira. There, between the closed schools of Maestro Nabor that followed the traditional closed-door training policy, and the Gavilanes who openly promoted their school in public performances and tournaments, the reputation of venezolano moderno became firmly entrenched in the region around Palmira, where it remains the most active style.

T. J. Desch-Obi, Ph.D Author of Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art in the Atlantic World

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BONAFONT ARGENTINE CANE COMBAT SYSTEM COMBAT WITH A TANGO FLAVOR . . .

Jorge Prina

THERE WAS A CANE FIGHTING SYSTEM in Argentina that existed at the beginning of the 20th century, in the city of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina—Buenos Aires, the cradle of the tango.

And this story began like this . . .

History With the arrival of the year 1900, a new century began. Over the last few years, Argentina had shifted its economic base from small landowners selling their surplus to Europe to an industrialized export-oriented economy bringing the country wealth rivaling that of Europe or North America. Money flowed in, and the rich became even wealthier. For the gauchos of the pampas, life turned out differently. The expansion of a hacienda economy fencing in the once wide-open spaces in the mid-19th century reduced the range of the herds of wild horses and cows that had roamed the savannahs for centuries. With the disappearance of the herds, the traditional source for the economic livelihood of the gaucho disappeared as well.

The increasing implementation of modern rational methods of managing livestock and the plow-

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ing-under of grasslands for wheat cultivation resulted in a sharp decline in the demand for the type of seasonal labor the gaucho had depended on. As a result of this profound economic shift, many gauchos ended up migrating to the urban zone around Buenos Aires to work as unskilled laborers and avoid starvation. And so, the wild and free life of the gauchos slowly withered away in the face of industrialized progress.

The increasing demand for Argentine foodstuffs by Europe and the USA called for a pool of disciplined docile workers. They had to be willing to work hard on a regular schedule and low pay to keep the economy growing and the money pouring into Argentina. In addition to not having a large enough labor pool to fulfill the increasing demands of an export-oriented economy, the existing workforce was not ready to do the kind of labor demanded of them. The former life of a gaucho did not prepare him for a life of spending his workday off a horse. On top of that, he was not ready to be tied to a time clock and under the command of a supervisor who probably had no idea how to ride a horse, lasso a wild bull, or fight with a knife.

Seeking more dependable and less

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independent-minded workers, government-sponsored immigration initiatives led 6.6 million people, mainly from Italy and Spain but also other parts of Europe and the Ottoman Empire, to migrate to Argentina and work in the numerous factories springing up, or, alternately, to colonize and farm the immense tracts of land recently taken from local Indian nations. Dreaming of lush farms and high-paying factory jobs, all too often, their dreams were unfulfilled. Many immigrants ended up joining the once free-roaming gauchos in the slum neighborhoods, or arrabales, that grew up around the abattoirs or the docks along the southern banks of the Rio de Plata, separating the rich from the poor of Buenos Aires. Here they worked in brutal conditions for long hours and low wages. Despite this or because of this, Buenos Aires developed into one of the great cities of the early 20th century. It was a city rich in knowledge and with great cultural diversity. Porteños, as the inhabitants of Buenos Aires were known, lived within a strict racial and class-stratified society. On the one side was the rich, often of European descent. Among the elites, at this time, a class of entitled rich young men known as The Dandies came of age.

On the other side of the river dividing the city were the de-tribalized Indians, Afro-Argentines, Euro-Indians, Afro-Indians, and poor immigrants who often lived a hand-to-mouth existence in the arrabales. Among the day laborers, longshoremen and factory workers were those who lived in the space between legal and illegal activities, known as malevos, taitas, or compadres. These were the people who worked when they could find it, who drank all night long and danced the tango in the little bars tucked away in narrow and dirty alleys. These were the men who often had nothing in life but their honor and a knife to defend the one thing they held more precious to them than their life—their reputation that lived on long after they shuffled off this mortal coil.

Argentina was similar to much of Latin America. At the time, throughout the rural parts of the continent, a man’s skill with the knife was highly valued and often tested by those seeking to burnish their honor at the expense of others. From a young age, it was typical for a father, uncle, or older male relative to give their young male relatives a small knife, or guri, as it was called, and instructed to stab any other little boys who harass, molest, or otherwise bother them. From the late 19th century up to the 1930s, young males from all walks of life were initiated into boyhood in this manner.

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It was there in the arrabales, where the rhythms of the tango played all night long into the early morning hours, that the history of the working class and criminals was written, often in blood. After long hours engaged in back-breaking labor, working class men would go the small run-down shacks to drink and dance with the women who relied on paid survival-sex as their trade. In the evening hours, the criminal class of males, having woken up only a few hours before, would dress in their finest clothes. Then they would head out to the same bars to meet up with their women who hustled the working men for money, to meet up with colleagues to plan new money-making schemes, or to relax after having made a good “score.” In these dives of roughcut lumber, a few half-drunk and bored musicians would play rough tunes where couples could dance the tango, and bartenders could serve harsh rum that would allow their clientele to forget their troubles for a few hours. It was a rough time full of rough, unsophisticated people.

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The popularity of this atmosphere spread beyond the arrabales and up to the educated, refined “good folks” neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. With time on their hands and money in their pockets, the Dandies seeking adventure and good times would gather together in groups for protection and journey to the nightlife offered in the arrabales. Guess what would happen? Time made the tango trendy, and the Dandies wanted to meet the malevos, and what happened . . . ? Imagine the thoughts and feelings crossing the minds of these malevolent, handsome taitas and compadritos, when seeing a group of Dandies entering his “place”— elegant and sharply dressed like a waiter from a nice restaurant, with polished shoes, buttoned-up suit, and a funyi hat on top of their head. They wore a suit of clothes that would easily cost the men here at least six months’ pay. What happened had to happen, blood flowed, and so on . . . but that’s the place where we are going, a place that existed long ago.

Born in 1875, Arturo Bonafont grew up interested in sports and physical conditioning and later in life dedicated himself to teaching fencing at the exclusive GEBA, or the Gymnastics and Fencing of Buenos Aires, an aristocratic club of the time. Bonafont had a passion regarding combative arts and researched them assiduously, getting his hands on recently published works on Japanese jiu-jitsu or the self-defense methods with the walking stick by Pierre La Vigny. Not satisfied with reading the latest books on self-defense, Artu-

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ro and his friend Jorge Newberey went down to the arrabales where the best street fighters hung out.

There he honed his skills in bouts of unrehearsed and unrestrained combat. Armed with a blend of printed works and real-life experience, Arturo returned to the elite gymnasiums of Buenos Aires, and it is there that his experience in street fights with the support of his friend Jorge Newbery was taught. Here he devoted himself to training these upper-class boys to defend themselves with a cane against the knife of the malevos. At this time, the walking cane was a normal part of the everyday dress of men of substance, and Arturo continued to teach his unique brand of self-defense for many years. By the time the 1930s rolled around, Arturo felt the need to document his method in writing and share his hard-won insights to a broader audience, in a book entitled A Method of Defending Oneself with a Cane on the Streets. Due to the difficulties of life, Arturo never published the second volume of his method of self-defense. Still, in print over 70 years later, a testament is owed to Don Arturo Bonafont, as he is the father of the use of the cane in self-defense in Argentina.

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The Techniques This system relies on an inverted, or ice-pick, grip. The system is not a dueling art but strictly of self-defense. It is easily learned and a practically oriented art. The first thing Bonafont makes clear to the reader is that the cane must always be in motion unless they can be sure they are a safe distance away from the armed opponent. Every part of the cane, from the fist gripping the cane to the regatonón, or the tip, is identified, discussed, and evaluated in terms of its combative value.

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The Bonafont system is composed of both immobilizing locks and strikes. Guards are natural and straightforward. Attacks come at a fast and unpredictable angle.

The footwork is simplified and accounts for dealing with single and multiple opponents in either closed or open spaces.

After much experimentation and training, we can say the inverted Bonafont grip is better adapted for self-defense situations than the cane held in the traditional saber grip. Relying on a saber grip requires cocking the arm back to generate power, thereby showing the opponent your intent. The inverted Bonafont grip is structurally faster, as it depends only on the movement of the wrist and therefore minimizes any telegraphing of one’s intention.

Another advantage of this type of grip relates to maintaining an optimum distance of a cane to generate the power needed to injure an opponent. In contrast with the inverted Bonafont grip, the cane wielder can remain closer to his opponent than if he were using a saber grip. This grip, along

with precise footwork, allows one to attack and defend oneself at a much closer distance. Moreover, the unique grip will enable strikes from a wide number of unusual angles. Combined with thrusts using a two-handed grip near both ends when in very close proximity, as well as low kicks and trips, this makes for a powerful system of defense against knife-wielding opponents.

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Techniques, flow, and distance appreciation was trained in solo exercises and sparring matches.

A practitioner trained to handle himself against a committed unrehearsed knife attack by one or more opponents.

Remember, at the time, like every malevo who carried his knife, every gentleman carried his cane, a symbol of high social status. It was this symbol of his position that he learned to use against those armed with knives, not other men with canes.

A veteran of many fights, Don Arturo once said, “I had a vision that a man of peace arming himself with a cane of solid wood with some committed training could easily master the art of self-defense when called upon to do so. A solid cane of hardwood used to support a man of peaceful intent [can], in the hands of a person skilled in the art, easily become a very effective weapon for self-defense.”

The Bonafont cane fencing system is still alive and well—you just have to find someone to teach you. Those of us who have fought with sticks know it is important not to lose one’s weapon. To that end, Don Arturo said, “One must follow through with the blow of the cane. It must be swung with intent as to avoid your opponent grasping your weapon.” This is advice from a man who fought in the streets, a real master of fighting. Currently, the system is being disseminated and taught by Eduardo Festorazzi and Jorge Prina, both natives of Buenos Aires, the birthplace of Bonafont. Jorge Prina is a South American champion in full-contact stick fighting in 2015 and 2016, and available for the education, dissemination, or demonstration of the effectiveness of the Bonafont system, defended as Arthur would have liked, with the cane!

Don Arturo Bonafont continues: “At the moment when defending ourselves has become essential, we must instantaneously observe the position, attitude, demeanor, or aggressive movement of the adversary to apply our attack by arresting or counteracting his in the act of his initiation. To see and execute with the speed of lightning all at once.”

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Jorge Prina @ tacuara.dpu

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THE PURE ART OF ANGEL CABALES

SERRADA NG ESCRIMA JC Cabiero

A MAN FROM BARRIO IGANIA, Sibalom, Antique, the Philippines of the Visayan Islands, once decided to expose to the public his weapons close-quarter fighting art, which he called serrada ng escrima. This man was Angel Cabales (1917-1991), escrimador. Let us digress a bit to put this into a meaningful context. The term escrima-

dor is a marque bestowed only to a deathmatch-proven skilled fighter by other escrimadors in the Philippines. More importantly, only an escrimador can develop a fighter into another escrimador, thus proclaiming that fighter as an escrimador—not a self-proclaimed escrimador. It was in Stockton, California, in 1966, where Angel

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opened one of the first Filipino Martial Art schools in the United States of America.

Angel Cabales once explained, “I call my weapons fighting art serrada because I fight very close, inside to my attacker, to block and take them out right away, and serrada means close, inside—very close!

That is my fighting style.”

Angel Cabales was very gracious in giving part of his life to training me in serrada. It is Angel’s truth that I bear witness to. Angel’s teachings are grounded in the rawness of the art of fighting and the connectedness with life itself. Angel would say to me, “When you are a fighter, you are the same person every day.

When you eat or when you fight—

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you are the same person.” At first, I did not truly understand. However, as years of training with Angel transpired, I finally realized what Angel was telling me; I have to be the same person whether I am training with him or living my daily life—I must be who I am. Then I will be real to myself and in my art of fighting. Otherwise, if I am one person learning how to fight and being another person in my daily life, I am not real and cannot be one within myself. I would not be able to see the truth, to know the truth, and be truthful to myself and in the art of fighting. Angel was also telling me, I must be pure in heart to excel in life and reach the highest level of consciousness and spiritual realization. This will show

me the truth of my weakness and strength in life and my training.

As Angel’s fighter/student, I developed my weakness into strength and advanced my strength to another level of consciousness.

Blessed with the gift of the truth in the art of fighting, Angel had been well-educated in the barrio streets, the jungle, and backroom bars of the Philippines, not from books, a school, videos, TV, internet, or social media. It is this rawness that makes his art of fighting come alive. To clarify how this Filipino fighting art evolved to exist in the USA and get exposed to the world, we need to relate the historical happenings to the whole outcome, placing these events in perspective.

Angel Cabales learned from early childhood how to be a survivor on the unpaved earthen calles, or streets, in the barrios. A slight digression: the word barrio is derived from the Arabic noun, barr— meaning “land or open country.”

During this period, the Arabic word, barrī—or “of the land”—was applied to villages and rural communities that lay in the territory surrounding a town or city. Barrios were often considered disreputable and dangerous by government standards. To survive the streets in the barrios, one had to be mentally strong, alert, have pronounced physical prowess, and, most importantly, street smarts.

Those who did not know how to fight with street smarts did not

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survive the streets of the barrios; it was just that simple—nature’s law of survival. Angel told me his street survival training began in his childhood with his natural boxing skills, which he felt was innate.

He explained to me, when growing up, he enjoyed boxing and relied on his rudimentary boxing skills to defend himself against other kids.

He never had boxing lessons, but in many fights, he was able to defeat his opponent. Other times, both kids beat each other to a pulp, and the fight stopped due to mutual exhaustion. As he became a teenager, he included the rattan with his boxing skills because other teenagers were fighting with rattans. One time he said his weapons fighting skills and abilities increased as he got older. He attributed his ironclad defense abilities, as seen in his in-tightness, good body balance, and body positioning, to his raw boxing skills. From this base, he developed a prediction for fighting in close range. And this is how his fighting style developed to survive in the streets of the barrios.

One day, while still in his teens, Angel stated, a stranger from the mountains of Cebu in the Visayan Islands came to see him. He found out later that this stranger was also a great warrior of the land, a legendary escrimador, also known as

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Dimasalang—or “One who cannot be touched.” Also known as Feliscimo Dizon, he was a great escrimador and considered as a member of the Doce Pares group composed of the 12 best fighters of the Philippines. Dizon told Angel that he had heard of his pronounced fighting skills and abilities in his journeys throughout the barrios as word travels quickly about upcoming fighters who are developing a fearsome reputation. Dizon wanted to see for himself the fighting caliber of Angel, and soon enough, Angel had to defend himself once again.

Dizon was impressed with Angel’s iron defensive skills and abilities, attacks, and ability to end a fight quickly.

In 1932, at the tender age of 15, Angel Cabales began his rigorous and intensive training under the watchful eyes and tutelage of Felicisimo Dizon. Angel absorbed the knowledge of Felicisimo’s weapons fighting art very quickly—this was the main reason Felicisimo was inspired to train this young man in his weapons fighting art of escrima. From that moment on, the two rapidly became close friends developing into sangre familia, or family by blood; thus, Angel’s legacy began. Angel explained to me that Dizon had great respect for his fighting spirit and sensed that

he had the character and personality, especially living in the barrios, to make him his student/ fighter. At that moment, Dizon acknowledged Angel as a member of his sangre familia. He immediately took Angel under his wings, mentoring the young man. He expanded Angel’s fighting knowledge through his method of armed combat, which was known by every fighter on the island as decuerdas—meaning in Spanish, “the

winding of,” like winding a watch (i.e., torquing of the body). Angel explained to me that Dizon never named his fighting style—it was the village people who saw Dizon fight who named his style decuerdas. Thus, decuerdas was branded on Dizon. Soon after that, other fighters called him The DeCuerdas Fighter.

Angel indicated to me that Dizon utilized the streets and countryside for their training ground and

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used real situations in the barrios and in the roughest part of the city against the most hardened fighters to test his learning capacity and ability. Angel said, “Dizon would train me in his fighting based on many types of angles of attacks using one or two rattans, long and short blades—or espada y daga—and with a knife or two knives. Then we would go into a barrio or the most dangerous part of a town or city, and Dizon would have me challenge the toughest fighter. Each time, I would take out the other guy without waiting or thinking; just sometimes I block him, then I hit him many times.

Other fights I would smack him first and keep smacking him until he gives up or was knocked out!”

Angel specified that he would defeat his opponents within three to eleven seconds. For the most part, during these times, the rattan was the weapon of choice; other times, the blades would come out if the opponent desired. Angel emerged victorious in every fight. While most defeated fighters loved to fight another day, albeit badly bruised, some did not survive the encounter, especially when the blade was involved.

As each day turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months

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into years, Angel progressively developed his skills, abilities, and knowledge comparable to his teacher. It wasn’t long before Feliscimo and Angel were challenged in deathmatches by other escrimadors trying to burnish their reputations. From village to village, city to city, bars, and shipping docks, Angel said that most of these challenges took place with a short and long blade, and every time, he and Feliscimo ended the matches quickly, even when the odds were stacked against them eight against two. The challenges continued as they journeyed throughout the Philippines, and they left a long line of bloody but living opponents; others were not so lucky.

All of Feliscimo and Angel’s deathmatches lasted only three to eleven seconds; once the weapons came out, both men did not hesitate to eliminate their opponents. After many years of this type of training and deathmatches, Dizon finally informed Angel his training had come to an end—he must now venture on his own. Though parting was painful, each had to walk their path and begin new journeys.

Feliscimo Dizon returned to the mountains of the Philippines, and Angel started the next chapter of his life on a ship headed for Alaska, where new challenges and adven-

tures awaited him. Eventually, he settled down in Stockton, California, where in 1966, he revealed the Filipino Martial Arts to the public.

Angel always told me, in our native tongue of Tagalog, “Wala pang nakuha—maliban kung ito ay nakamit,” which meant, “Nothing is ever gained—unless it is earned!”

In other words, the more a fighter immerses themselves in the rigorous training of the pure art of serrada ng escrima, their fighting skills, abilities, and knowledge will increase.

The effort that a student puts into practice can be seen in their blocking and attacking. Additionally, and even more importantly, it will determine how they will handle their moment of truth. And this is the reason why Angel drilled into me the axiom that the foundation is the heartbeat and structure of his armed close-quarter combat art. Angel knew if the fighter had a solid, strong foundation, then the fighter could build upon this utilizing their skills, abilities, and knowledge to move into Advanced Weapons Training (AWT). However, if the fighter’s foundation were less than compact and robust, even if he advanced into the AWT portion of the art, his art would still be of inferior quality. Angel always

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reminded me of this lesson, telling me during our training sessions, “If you are weak in your foundation, you will be a weak fighter!”

Angel’s close-quarter combat weapons system, first and foremost, is adaptable to any fighting art. He often said to me and many others, “My fighting style works good with any fighting style—it is compatible with what you already know!” Angel’s close-quarter style is very simple and direct. In-tightness, economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of movements form the basis of his art. One blocks and attacks with bad intentions, striking vulnerable targets while seeking to circle behind the opponent. If the opponent hesitates and there is an opening, attack first and keep on striking those vulnerable targets and circle to the rear of the opponent. Angel often stated to me: “When you block, you got to hit.

When you hit, you hit, hit, until he is no more! If he doesn’t hit you first, then you must see the opening and hit him first, then hit, hit, hit until he is no more!”

Angel’s famous words spoken to me and the world was, “Hit a man three times, and he will fall!”

These are not shallow or posturing words, but words Angel translated into execution in real life deathmatches. In his attacks, he called

his execution Triple Strikes—targeting vulnerable targets of the opponent’s head. Finally, decuerdas, or torquing of the hips, is the key in Angel’s Triple Strikes.

So, no matter what fighting art you know and learned, anyone can find Angel’s close-quarter combat weapons fighting art and enhance one’s fighting skills, abilities, and knowledge in the art of fighting.

Every fighter is different, and training is tailored to their attributes. However, all training goes through, first and foremost, The Foundation, and second, AWT—or Advanced Weapons Training. And afterward, students progress into Master Level Training (MLT) with more realistic attacks and movements from the master trainer, to expose any weaknesses in their movements. During the fighter’s training, the fighter has fully developed their skills, abilities, and knowledge in mastering their movements in MLT. From this point, the fighter progresses to the next, highest level of consciousness and spiritual realization: Escrimador Level Training (ELT) to mature into a true pure escrimador. Training as an escrimador is continuous and everlasting—always being humbled by life. This is Angel’s Way.

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Angel’s weapons fighting art is ultimately a high-level sharp-edged weapons fighting art. It encompasses in-tight fighting, body balance, body positioning, body angling, economy of movement, and motion. Also, it stresses efficiency and effectiveness in execution, evasiveness, and fluidity in defensive and offensive movements.

Just as necessary is the ability to reverse, mobility in attacking, and adaptability in fighting tactics and strategy. In today’s modern world, the blade is often still the weapon of choice for many predators. Angel realized in any blade attack, the attributes of his weapons fighting art will determine whether the defender of the attack will survive their moment of truth. Angel would often tell me during our training sessions: “You must always have balance, all the time when you are moving when you are defending yourself. When you block and counter, you must have balance, and you always try to get your opponent to lose their balance. Remember, when there is no balance, it is hard to defend and harder to attack because there is no balance!”

I comprehended through the years that this was one of the basic rules of the art of self-defense. Angel was an escrimador who was masterful at getting his opponent off-bal-

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ance; once this occurred, Angel, an in-tight fighter, would zoom in on vulnerable targets, attacking with slicing and/or thrusting with his blade or blades.

His weapons fighting style was for survival, self-preservation of life— not for demonstrations, ranking, exercise, or school-type controlled environment training. Blocking the blade is a high-level art form; it takes a high degree of skill, ability, and knowledge to execute.

Knowing how to coordinate body positioning and body angle with

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the block is the root of the art, in conjunction with the essential primary attributes of body balance, coordination of mind and body, and footwork. Most people practicing knife self-defense usually face square to their attacker, and in doing so, provide a lot of targets to attack. This makes the blocking execution against the knife attack much more difficult to defend; so the learning process becomes more of jumping back to avoid being cut then jumping in to cut, which is becoming the most common practice seen. A trained blade fighter

understands efficiency, and effectiveness is always the sought-after goal.

Angel would say, “Do not waste time in movement; be direct, do not be fancy, and you must be very in-tight!” In other words: Economy in movement, simple and direct, and in-tightness are the keys to survive a blade attack!

At one time during my training, working deeper into Angel’s art, there was no longer a structure during our training sessions. I learned to expect the unexpected and express my fakes, picks, pulling, pushing, jamming, trapping, reversing, and sticky stick from all angles. Angel enhanced my footwork style of shuffling, angling, circling, crossover stepping, and rapid stepping while hitting—a readily identifiable characteristic of Angel’s movement.

Angel once reflected upon the importance of tactics and strategies in combat with a statement.

It is both profound and straightforward, reflecting the raw barrio environment Angel once fought in and lived: “In real, everything goes, there are no rules when it comes to your life!” Fighting is for one reason and one reason only: to take the attacker’s life within three to eleven seconds! Furthermore,

Angel would tell me, “If you take more than three to eleven seconds, you will give the attacker a chance to knock you out or kill you!”

I must reiterate, Angel’s art is not for tournament, ranking, or prestige. There is no exercise or drills like hitting stick to stick; in Angel’s training, when we feed a strike, we strike the body, and the defender must block. Angel believes this is the only way to learn how to defend yourself in a life and death situation. Angel Cabales proved his fighting skills, abilities, and knowledge in over 100 deathmatch challenges in the Philip-

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pines. Working on the fishing boats off Alaska, he was attacked by five very large Canadians in California.

Over the years many escrimadors challenged him, and he emerged victorious from every encounter.

We hope and pray we will never have to fight for our life during our time on earth. However, we realize every day someone dies violently at the hands of another. Consequently, if our moment of truth happens—we know based on our gladiator-type training that, deep within our heart and our belief in

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God, we are ready to eliminate the bloodthirsty evil person from this earth within three to eleven seconds. The Pure Art of Serrada ng Escrima is now my path, and if a fighter so chooses, of his/her own free will, to seek the purity of Angel’s weapons fighting art, I will say this: My teacher, Angel Cabales, was enthusiastic about teaching with his heart to all fighters hungry to learn his weapons close-quarter combat fighting style. Following in his footsteps, so too I shall continue the same passion as my mentor/ teacher/trainer/family escrimador Angel Cabales, in training voracious fighters. Suppose the fighter has the discipline and diligent durable energy to train often. In that case, the results this fighter will “gain” will be a wide-ranging understanding of the true knowledge of Angel’s weapons fighting art. For all the fighters who will search and seek me out, I will, with all my heart and soul, endow Angel’s Truth—through everything I have been taught/trained by Angel Cabales. Mabuhay ang the Pure Art of Cabales Serrada ng Escrima— forever!

ELEMENTS OF THE PURE ART OF SERRADA NG ESCRIMA The most significant aspect of what Angel taught me was the elements of his foundation of serrada. As I mentioned previously, the foundation is the “heartbeat and structure” of his close-quarter combat weapons fighting art. One cannot learn Angel’s style of weapons fighting without completely learning the foundation of serrada. In the foundation training of the Pure Art of Serrada ng Escrima, the training application is deterministic—Knowable Outcome training. In other words, I know what strike will be applied, and I execute a block that is predetermined in the structure (In AWT, it becomes stochastic—meaning, one whose state is non-deterministic).

As Angel’s fighter, I learned to utilize simple steps to keep my feet underneath my shoulders and maintain a fundamental comprehension in vertical fighting, such as pugilism—which Angel loved.

2. Body Angle Angling my upper body at the optimum side position, limiting the target amount to the attacker. In other words, instead of moving forward with my body square to the opponent, I turn my body sideways so all the opponent will view is the side of my arm and body, providing fewer targets to attack.

3. Body Balance

Angel taught me the importance of:

In conjunction with body positioning and angling, Angel taught me always to be balanced in the execution of movement.

1. Body Positioning

4. Timing

45-degree angle in stepping forward from a neutral position (square body with feet together) and utilizing the 80-20 footwork, which is 80% of my weight in my front leg and 20% on my back leg.

In my training with Angel, he taught me how to gauge the timing of my opponent, allowing me to be effective in my execution of movements.

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5. In-tightness

7. DeCuerdas

In Angel’s style of weapons fighting, I learned right from the beginning that I had to be very in-tight with my movements. I always kept my arms and hands close to my body in the execution of movements. Angel drilled me never to extend my arms to block or hit. He trained me to comprehend that, as soon as I extended my arm away from my body, my movements became inefficient and ineffective, including losing Body Balance.

This is one significant aspect Angel learned from Dizon: body-torquing for power. Angel instilled in me the key skill of torquing my hips to produce the power I needed to defend myself and in striking my opponent with bad intentions. He told me that self-defense was created for the small man, and a small man must learn how to block and hit like a very big man. He indicated that big men are rarely attacked because they are very big. Big men always attack the small man because they are small. Nature has a way to balance this, and the fighting arts for self-defense and self-preservation came to LIFE! He said to me, “Never hold back; always fight for your life—because your life will depend on this!”

6. Economy of Movement and Motion in Execution (no wasted actions) Angel taught me the critical importance of concentrating on utilizing direct and straightforward execution in my movements. In other words, when I execute his style, I must always use the minimum amount of movements—instead of taking three movements to accomplish my block, I utilize two movements. He educated me, advising me if I did not need to move my arm, hand, or feet to complete my block. And if it did not provide any added value in execution, then I must eliminate the wasted movement.

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I train fighters to their optimum potential, preparing them for their moment of truth—this is how Angel trained me. A master trainer develops the fighter within their capacity and then expands that capacity through being patient, supportive, informative, and truthful, exposing all weaknesses. This is the knowledge I learned from Angel Cabales. Angel’s weapons fighting method is alive, and in constant motion—never stationary. Angel’s weapons fighting art is only geared for the realities of life; in true combat, anything goes!

My training method involves this stochastic process, providing many different looks/approaches in the attack. This assists in improving the fighter’s focus, concentration, steadiness, relaxed yet total readiness, controlling of all emotions.

Defects must be exposed during training sessions, developing internal self-control: as one example, training/developing the fighter to control his emotions, for the mind and body are a perfect symbiosis—any stimulus or outside factor equally affects both. An aggressive frame of mind produces a physical reaction that can be detrimental to their life—in other words, taking control of your emotions instead

of letting your emotions take control of you!

In Advance Weapons Training, I begin training the fighter to recognize his internal emotional content, for it is critical that the fighter understands the truth of who they are—eliminating not only wasted movements, but putting aside egos, pride, etc., and eradicating all false self-confidence. Instead, one must cultivate a high level of self-control.

The fighter must practice this internal self-control 24/7 in their life.

Once the fighter can succeed consistently—not only during hermit training or regular training sessions but in their daily activities— this demonstrates that the fighter has achieved internal self-control permanently, and transformation of self-control becomes the Fighter’s Truth, forever—an attribute that extraordinary fighters have (Angel’s Truth) . . .

JC Cabiero @jc.cabiero

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INDIAN LATHI Mahesh Kumar Ramakrishna

MY NAME IS MAHESH KUMAR RAMAKRISHNA, and I am happy to be a part of The Immersion Labs to bring my experience in showcasing one of the popular forms of Indian martial arts practices across India. I started to practice silambam and kuthu varisai (the name for lathi comes out of silambam of Tamil Nadu state) at the age of eight and completed it at the age of 18. I then started researching, teaching, and then traveling across South India to gain more knowledge. It has been a long journey since then, and it is still going on.

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Introduction to the Lathi The Indian lathi is a bamboo staff, which is hard as steel. I cannot compare it with any other weapon available in nature as regards its strength and durability. Today across India, the lathi is often the preferred weapon of choice. The use of the lathi has a long history in human history. Archaeological research has uncovered evidence pointing to the use of staff

by Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens to hunt. There still exist hunting and gathering tribes in parts of remote India today who rely upon lathi, spear, bow and arrow, boomerang or valari, deer horns or madu, and small sharp weapons like a dagger for hunting and defending their territories against farmers and bandits.

The Indian subcontinent is one of the oldest on mother earth and has made significant contributions in all fields of human knowledge.

The journey of ancient Indian warfare has its own significance as the Indian subcontinent was well versed in the arts of war. Strategy, tactics, and weapons were developed in the field of battle and used successfully to defend our land for thousands of years from invaders from Asia and Europe. As India became occupied by invaders from West Asia (in the 15th century by

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the Mughal empire) and Europe (in the 18th century by the British), the colonial overlords banned the training and practice of the arts of war. India’s warriors suffered a major blow through the imposition of this edict.

Additionally, it proved to be a great challenge for those who struggled to keep the arts of war alive for the next generation. Possessed of a profound understanding of how to teach men how to fight, groups of warriors came up with the idea of training the next generation in the lathi, as it was not among the weapons banned by the colonial authorities. In the end, this turned out to be a prescient move on their part, as seen in the fact that police throughout India still use the lathi as the first weapon of choice for crowd control or other security issues.

Before India won its independence from British colonial rule, hundreds of independent kingdoms made up what later became the nation of India. After independence in 1948, India was reorganized into one nation, made up of 29 states and seven national territories. Today, many of these states have their own martial art traditions. However, in all these regions, the lathi is the primary weapon of choice.

Looking for the roots of Indian martial arts, we turn our eyes to the writings known as the Vedas. One of the oldest Vedas dating back to 1700-1100 BC mentions the existence of Indian martial arts in the chapter entitled the Dhanurveda.

The Tamils of south India are among the oldest populations in India. Over time they have amassed a rich written collection. Among the Rigvedas dating from 1500-1200

BC, several hymns—attributed to the hermit sage Agastyar—known as the Kampu Sutra, describe advanced fighting theories in verse.

Furthermore, the Akananuru and Purananuru books that make up the Sangam Literature of the 2nd century BC also reference existent martial art traditions. Tamil civilization contributed to a range of arts and sciences such as martial arts, siddha medicine, music,

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dance, architecture, stone, metal sculpture, and many others. I hope this brief selection on the wealth of writings on Indian martial arts hints at the wealth of literature on this and other subjects.

As I have written earlier, India consists of 29 states with their own indigenous martial art traditions.

With this in mind, I will discuss some of the martial art traditions in several states.

Tamil Nadu If we pass back through history and look at a few of the highlights of Indian martial arts, we turn to the establishment of the Shaolin Temple in China and its relation to Bodhidharma. In the year AD 500, the Prince of Kandhi Puram, present-day Kanchipuram, took Indian martial arts to China and established the Shaolin Temple.

During this time, the names, por kalai (armed battlefield arts), kuthu varisai (unarmed combat), and varma kalai (the arts of attacking vital points), served to identify and organize martial arts. An examination of the historical records shows many instances where Tamil rulers exported the Indian martial arts of silambam, kuthu varisai, and varma kalai to East Asian countries. India’s relation to combat has changed dramatically since

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then as new technological changes in warfare relegated many of these sophisticated, efficient, and effective systems to memories held by a handful of warrior castes or local villagers who saw the value in these martial knowledges.

Today, the local martial art of Tamil Nadu is referred to as silambam after its main weapon, the bamboo staff. The repertoire of silambam consists of a wide variety of weapons, showing its long and bloody history. Among the weapons taught today are the long bamboo staff, the short bamboo staff, madu, the val kadiyam (sword and shield), the surul val (flexible sword), the et (spear), the kodali (ax), the pichuva (short knife), the kutthu vall (S-shaped curved dagger), the kattna, etc.

Understanding the value lathis held throughout India’s history is found in accounts from the 17th century AD. During these times, writings tell how the Kings Puli Thevar and Dheeran Chinnamalai had a military unit armed solely with staff named Thadi Padai. In those tales passed down, Indian heroes such as Veerapandiya Kattabomman and Maruthu Pandiyar relied on their skills in silambam in their fight against the British army.

Today, the popularity of the staff can be seen in the wealth of different styles still practiced, such as: kuravanjee, charapatta, idyappa nayakar, karnadagam, paravee silambam, tulukanam bar, tulukanam, ramarbanam, naga basham or nagam 16, marathiyam markanam, tomman kuthu, kalla pathu, assupathu, panayaree mallu, iyangari varesai, dhevar, sal patta, kadambam, etc.

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Silambam training begins with the student mastering footwork patterns first before progressing to fighting techniques. Once a person masters the use of footwork, he will then be handed a silambam staff and taught various patterns called vaaral, or twirling staff moves. In the vaaral, the staff moves bottom to top 180 degrees on each side of the body. Training such as this is typical across India. Footwork patterns are done in geometrical patterns beginning with pinnal, or twisting. Once mastered, a person can turn 360 degrees without making any foot movements. Nadai, or walking, by contrast, is where one moves both forward and backward on a line.

Nadai is composed of ten different sequences. First is neirkot nadai, or usual walk, which we do in our daily life. The practitioner can move both forward and backward while the body remains facing one direction.

The second is the thullal, or hopping walk, where both legs move simultaneously. Here, the right leg will occupy the space of the left leg in the move.

This pattern operates in a straight line going both forward and backward.

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The third is the thaaval, or jumping walk, where both legs move simultaneously, creating a space of one meter and then holding the new position.

Thaaval is made in one direction, both forward and backward.

The fourth is pinnal nadal, or twist walk, which is a way of walking where the legs twist around each other. This move helps us move up to 360 degrees if needed and helps take up a defensive position. Here, the body moves in one direction in a rolling flow until it stops at the point where one’s attention is needed. This movement is also done on a straight line, both forward and backward.

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The fifth is sarpa nadai, or snake walk, which is a move in which one moves in a crisscross fashion. It is a tactical type of footwork pattern with both defensive and offensive possibilities. As with many patterns already described here, one may move either forward or backward.

Sixth, girkey or circle move, is a move made to change the direction one is facing as needed to maintain a comfortable stance. This pattern is composed of two parts, known as the pin-girkey and mun-girkey. Both girkey patterns further divide into four parts: quarter, half, three, fourth, and full. To make a pin-girkey, we must move the back leg first, and to make a mun-girkey, we must first move the front leg.

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The seventh is pakka nadai, or a sideways walk, where the practitioner will rotate their body 180 degrees twice, altogether covering 360 degrees. This pattern works standing still or moving forward or backward.

The eighth is peratal, or roll walk. Here, one walks in a straight direction where the body moves in a rolling flow until the practitioner arrives at a spot where they determine they must be. These moves occur in both a forward and backward direction.

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Kuthu Varisai translates into “freehand combat” and is also known as kai silambam. It is based on movements of animals such as the tiger, snake, eagle, and elephant. Kuthu varisai was known as adi thadi and ghata gusthi. Pedi varisai concentrates on joint locks and immobilizations and goes under the names of malyutham or gusthi. Korvai is a name for shadow fight, which is like a karate kata or kung fu keun.

The actual training is done only with two individuals; one attacks and the other defends.

We can see this kind of training taught to Shaolin monks, as illustrated on the wall paintings of the Shaolin temple:

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The main person in the painting with black skin is an Indian, and the person of lighter color is a Chinese monk.

If you get a chance to see ancient muay thai and compare it with kuthu varisai, you will find many similarities between the two as well.

The advanced form of freehand combat is known as varma kalai, in which an aggressor targets the opponent’s vital points. These vital points are observed and attacked by using varma thundu kattai or different mudras. Mudras

are symbolic gestures often practiced with the hands and fingers to strike the human body’s vital points. The different mudras are called chakra mudra, vishnu mudra, thrisula mudra, shakti mudra, gaja mugam mudra, kudhrai mugam mudra, sarpa mudra, sangu mudra, nandu mudra, etc. Interestingly, this art derives from an aspect of the South Indian healing art of siddha medicine that developed to benefit common people in curing certain aches and pains. In other parts of India, this form of medical treatment is known as Ayurveda or Marma Chikista.

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Most of us know about acupuncture. What many Westerners do not realize is that the historical records state that this originally was an Indian science. Chroniclers write, in the 5th century BC, of the South Indian sage Siddhar. He also was known as Bhogar per the last wishes of his teacher, Bhogars Guru Kalanginaathar, or, as they call him in China, Confucius. Tradition claims Bhogar traveled to China to spread the knowledge of siddha sciences throughout China, where he is remembered today as Lao Tse or Bo-Yang—the founder of Taoism. Bo-Yang was a key figure propounding the theory of duality of matter—the male Yang and female Yin—which conforms to the siddha concept of shiva-shakti, or positive-negative forces. Today, many people recognize this form of treatment in Chinese acupuncture.

energy), pitta (fire energy), and kaphaghliuk (water energy).

Varma kalai is a profound subject and deserves a more in-depth explanation. According to the ancient understanding of the body, there are about 108 chakras. Out of the 108, only six are important chakras. There are also seventy-two thousand nadis, of which 14 are essential and three of which are extremely important. Then there are energies, including ten vayus (gaseous energies), vata (air

Madhya keralam kalaripayattu, practiced in the central part of the Kerala State, combines northern and southern styles. Thekkan kalaripayattu, practiced in the southern part of Kerala, focuses predominantly on freehand combat skills and marma, or attacking of vital points. One begins training kalarippayattu in the morning with hours devoted to mastering

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In brief, we will be in good health only if our body has a balance of all of the above. Any changes in the flow of energy will cause illness and sickness.

Kerala Kalaripayattu is the martial art practiced in Kerala state, which dates to the 2nd century AD. Kalaripayattu is traditionally taught through the gurukulam system.

This art has been exposed to the outside world for almost two decades now. There are three different systems of kalaripayattu.

First, there is vadakan kalaripayattu, also known as tulunadan, kadathanadan, or vattanthiruppu sambradayam. These forms of art are located in the northern parts of the state and oriented towards weapon-based fighting skills.

basic footwork and stances named after animals such as the elephant, lion, tiger, snake, wild boar, etc.

Blunt weapons are then picked up and trained. Finally, students begin training with edged weapons.

The most common weapons used in kalaripayattu are the staff, short staff, thala (a short stick used for attacking vital points), sword and shield, spear, bow and arrow, dagger, and the flexible sword.

Andhra Pradesh Kara samu is the name used for staff training in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The Andhra Pradesh warfare lineage goes back to the 13th century Vijayanagar empire of the Konaseema region. Today, it is known as Rayalaseema. The native fighting system of chedi talimkhana or yudhkaushalya is often abbreviated to talimkhana or simply talim in the Urdu language. An exponent of this art will master a wide range of weapon sub-systems, including the baku samu (knife fighting), katti samu (sword fighting) madu (double deer-horns), as well as the flexible sword. Training begins with footwork practice very much similar to silambam training. Once the teacher is satisfied with the student’s footwork training, instruction with the staff begins, and finally edged weapons.

Andhra Pradesh has a minor tradition of empty-handed traditions.

They are limited to gusthi (wrestling) and puli attam (tiger dance).

Performed only by senior martial artists who paint themselves as a tiger, the tiger dance is composed of martial art sequences. In the recent past, those who painted themselves as tigers would never face a challenge again. As of today, this prohibition has fallen by the wayside. Now anyone can paint themselves as tigers and perform martial art routines.

Every year, villagers here participate in stick fighting melees during the Banni Utsavam of Sri Mala Malleswara Swamy Temple at Devaragattu in Kurnool district during the festival of Vijaya Dasami. If anybody seeks to understand how a staff operates in battle mode, I recommend visiting this village. On this occasion, thousands of villagers gather, divide themselves into two groups, and attack each other with staves and fire-staves (staves set on fire on both ends). At times people lose their life, and hundreds of people will get very badly injured. This is the only place in India where we can find such a practice.

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Karnataka In Karnataka state, the training for martial arts takes place at a site known as the garadi mane, or the traditional training hall for gusthi wrestling. It is also a place where another form of martial art training is practiced, like kolu varase (staff fighting), kai varase (freehand combat), bijli (the flexible sword), katti varase (sword fighting), and baku (the dagger). There is another martial art tradition in Karnataka known as thulu or banta, which is currently practiced along the coast of Karnataka. Karnataka has had a long and convulsive history of fighting off invaders’ attempts to take away its freedom. Finally, the British succeeded where many had tried and failed before them.

In silambam, there is a style known as karnadagam, whose origins lie in Karnataka but has spread as far as Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Maharashtra The mardani khel is a martial art developed in the 16th century among the Marathas. The name Marathas derives from the word Mar Hut, meaning “you will only leave the place when you die.” Mardani khel is a warrior art dedicated to instructing its practitioners in the use of armed techniques for use in

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single combat and against several opponents. Among the weapons used in this form of art are lathi, staff, sword, shield, spear, dagger, kukri, double deer horns, and bow and arrow. The training starts with footwork practice similar to silambam training, with other weapons added later during the training regime.

Bihar, West Bengal, and Orissa Pari khanda is a fighting form created by the Rajputs and is a living tradition in many parts of Bihar state. The word pari means shield, and the word khanda means sword.

Khanda has also given birth to a local dance form named the chhau dance, incorporating other local martial techniques. The Paika, a class of warriors from Jharkhand, Orissa state, are also renowned practitioners. In Bengal state, it is known as raibesh. Chhau is the name of the traditional dance-drama of the eastern regions of India and consists of three sub-styles.

The three styles of chhau are named after the district or village where they originate, in seraikella chau of Bihar, purulia chau of Bengal, and mayurbhanj chau of Orissa. In Orissa state, the occasion of the Puri Jaganath Chariot is a reason for many public lathi demonstrations. As with many of

the other weapons systems already mentioned, beginners must first master the footwork. Next, they are introduced to the staff and finally edged weapons.

Rajasthan, Utthrakhand, and Uttar Pradesh Several terms traditionally refer to the martial arts in northwest India, but the most common today is shastara vidiya, or the science of self-defense. Here, swordsmen practiced their techniques in routines using sharp swords. Freestyle sparring occurs with wooden staves used in place of sharpened blades. In all three of the states, the lathi is a common tool used in everyday life, serving several purposes. As time has passed, practice with the lathi is becoming less and less common in these states.

Himachal Pradesh Thoda is a martial art form practiced in Himachal Pradesh. The name thoda derives from the round piece of wood fixed to the head of the arrow. The history of thoda goes back to the days of the ancient epic of the Mahabharata when bows and arrows were the primary weapon of soldiers who took part in epic battles.

Punjab Gatka is a complete martial system practiced in Punjab state.

Gatka emerged in the 16th century, developed by the Sikh gurus to protect their community from the Mughal warriors pouring in over the Khyber Pass. In fact, the founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak, was born into a Kshatriya or warrior caste family.

The Sikhs are the only community in India permitted to carry weapons in public. Mastery of gatka relies upon footwork movements, called panthra, and is trained for many hours to develop precise stepping and moving of the body.

According to the precepts of gatka, it is the footwork that balances the entire body while using weapons.

One does panthra in all different directions. Once a student has learned panthra, one may readily use the 18 different weapons that make up the armory of gathka, such as the barcha (spear), the chakram (flat steel ring), the khanda (Indian sword), and the dahl (shield made of steel or leather).

Other weapons include the katar (double-edged dagger), the kirpan (short curved dagger), the lathior marati (bamboo staff), the tapa (battle-ax), the tir kaman (bow and arrow), etc.

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Manipur Thang-ta is an armed component of the indigenous tribal Manipuri martial art also known as huyen lalong. Traditionally, this was a village art of warriors. During the 18th century, kings would select local champions who would engage in duels where they fought from first-blood duels to deathmatches with champions chosen from amongst rival clans. Duels such as these were not free-forall affairs but governed by strict rules of conduct (even after the duel, the loser traditionally lost his head at the hands of the winner).

The armed component of thangta originates out of the system’s main weapons, the thang (sword), and the ta (spear). Unarmed huyen lalong is called sarit sarak and is used in conjunction with thang-ta when the fighter loses their weapon.

I have provided a brief overview of the wealth of martial art traditions over my vast and beautiful country. India has a long and deep history of warrior traditions and other forms of physical, spiritual, and intellectual education and cultivation. I hope the readers who have come this far have enjoyed these brief descriptions. Maybe someday, some will even make their way over to my country and begin training in one of these wonderful, beautiful, ancient, practically oriented, and effective traditions.

Thank you.

Mahesh Kumar Ramakrishna @silambammahesh

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FIRST THINGS FIRST:

THE WAR CLUB IN NATIVE AMERICAN WARRIOR ARTS Bethany J. Dillon

WE HAVE ALL HEARD of individual Native American warriors and their daring feats of bravery and skill. Over and over again, These men stoically faced certain death in the quest to resist the invasions of explorers, government agents, and colonists. Representing another world, another way of life, they poured over every crevice, river, and burial ground in the Americas, looking for gold and silver and furs. Some of the names of the great men and women who stood tall and fought for the freedom of their people include Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Capitan Jack, Cochise, Crazy Horse, Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and Lozen. From the first Indian uprisings against the Vikings by Inuit warriors in Vinland in AD 1010 to the last Apache holdouts from the band of Cochise in the Sierra Nevadas of Mexico in the 1930s, the stories of these Indian

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warriors still excite the hearts of all who hear of their deeds. Today’s fascination with Indian culture and history drives the imagination of researchers, historians, and archeologists. Although they have done much in preserving, recording, and sharing their discoveries, they have glossed over one significant aspect of daily Indian life: one of the most culturally profound, somewhat obvious, and necessary practices of the Native people— the warrior arts. These traditions originated long before European arrival and would have disappeared long ago, if it weren’t for a handful of practitioners across the globe working to keep the ancient and effective traditions alive.

In Missouri, the Native American Warrior Arts—or NAWA—dedicates itself to the revitalization of the Native Warrior practices. NAWA focuses on the dances, games, history, wrestling, weapons, and warfare of the Native Americans of all the Americas. For over 30 years, researchers from NAWA have bent their knees before Native American elders, dancers, researchers, and historians to learn the warrior

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arts of the First Americans that our ancestors passed down through the generations and, to no small degree, have been erased by time, violence, and change. But far from it, many of these arts are tirelessly preserved, used, and recorded for future generations.

Unlike the martial systems of Asia, the indigenous combative repertoires of the Americas have received little recognition due to the systematic destruction of the corpus of knowledge Native Americans had developed over the centuries. These conditions have led to several misguided and sometimes willfully mistaken ideas regarding the warrior arts of the Native Americans—misleading ideas such as: Indians were savages armed with simple weapons who charged head-on into the fray of battle with no ideas of tactics or strategy. The truth is that every Indian nation developed and possessed sophisticated and adaptable military tactics along with a set of armaments that supported a warrior culture that was unique to every tribe, city-state, confederation, or empire.

Training

Warrior Traditions

It is a fact Native Americans trained and mastered their weapons and themselves, in the same way professional warrior castes such as the samurai, sohei, and ninjas of medieval Japan cultivated their skills.

Survival demanded no less in the harsh extremes and, at times, heavily conflicted lands of the Americas. Warfare itself was prevalent long before European arrival, and Indians fought over access to natural resources, slaves, as well as honor or prestige. Some nations lived in fortified walled villages to deter raids from enemies. Other less populous nations had to rely on taking advantage of natural hiding places and the skills of their few warriors to survive.

The middle to late 1700s proved to be a time of significant change for the Indians of the Northern Plains.

By this time, they had linked up with Indians of the Southern Plains such as the Kiowa, Ute, and Comanche, to obtain a steady supply of horses. The introduction of horses to the plains had a profound impact on their traditional lifeways. With a herd of horses at their disposal, they could range farther in search of food sources and enemy villages to raid. They could collect and transport a more considerable amount of material goods and therefore accumulate more wealth. Consequently, the once foot-bound Indians created a unique mounted warrior culture that has captured people’s imagination around the world.

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Young Plains Indian males began their training early on. As young children, they would help set up raiding camps and watch the spare horses while the older boys and men attacked enemy settlements.

As they grew older, they would take actual part in skirmishes and raids, knowing the fastest way to

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increase their wealth and status within their community was to boast of their skills in warfare and maintain a greater herd of ponies.

Indian women also enjoyed wider latitude in their expected behavior and were accorded greater voice in political decisions than was allowed to European women at the time. Within the Iroquois confederacy of present-day New York and Canada, women often took over the warrior education of young males when their fathers left on raids.

Mothers would often work while supervising the children sparring with makeshift weapons such as cattail reeds and sticks. Although there was a general understanding regarding the gendered division of labor, still there were many great female warriors, such as Nanye-hi of the Cherokee, Pine Leaf of the Gros-Ventre/Crow, Running Eagle of the Piegan/Blackfoot, Pretty Nose of the Arapaho, and Buffalo Calf Woman of the Northern Cheyenne. All these women and many more cemented their reputations as fearsome warriors over the years.

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Sport and Warfare By the year 1428, in the Valley of Mexico, the Triple Alliance of the city-states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, better known as the Aztec empire, formed large urban centers. In addition to daily and weekly markets for feeding the population, these areas featured monumental ceremonial centers, pyramids, and wide paved avenues filled the urban zones. The Aztecs built aqueducts linking springs from the neighboring mountains to the city-states surrounding Lake Texcoco. At the time, the gods demanded a steady supply of human blood to nourish themselves. And as a result, there were continuous raids into neighboring kingdoms, as competing empires sought to expand their domination and ensure a steady supply of prisoners to act as ballplayers and sacrificial victims. Passed down from the earlier Olmec empire, the ballgame, once known as ullamaliztli, was central to Aztec cultural life. As it relates to this article, some scholars suggest that teams learned to play as a single unit as the Aztec arm prepared to maneuver and fight as a single unit.

The transposition of war and weapon techniques into a sport can be found across both continents—

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from ballgames played among the Olmec, Toltec, Mayan, and Aztec, to wrestling competitions among the Inuit and Yup’ik, or the game of stickball among the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creeks of Mississippi and Alabama. Stickball movements were easily transferred to a war club, highlighting the connection between warfare and sport.

Common to every Indian nation in the Americas is the use of a stick and club for nearly every aspect of life. From hunting to sport and warfare, the stick has been integral to the everyday life of Native Americans. Let us expound further upon the history, importance, and application of the stick and club in the Americas.

War Clubs The use of sticks in resource management strategies and warfare often intertwine through the historical record of the Americas.

For example, throwing sticks to kill small animals was prevalent throughout the Americas. Later, they modified sticks to increase their range and accuracy, as seen in the latter atlatl, or throwing spear. Archeologists and ethnologists have documented the use of sticks in other contexts. They have also described how many villages at specific times of the year would mobilize group hunts meant to corral animals into a pre-arranged clearing where the trapped animals could be clubbed, butchered, and distributed to the families of the villages. As the stick became integral to resource management tactics, one does not have to stretch their imagination to see how this technology could transfer to crush the skulls of political enemies. Or they asked the spirit of one’s ancestors to imbue one’s club with special powers needed to excel in the hunt or raids.

As societies evolved, the simple stick would likewise change to suit the needs of the warrior, hunter, or shaman. In the Americas—or Turtle Island, as it is also known— the stick would transform into a beautiful and deadly weapon.

Modifications to a simple club include the emergence of stone war clubs. Restricting myself to one example, among the Yup’ik of central Alaska, wooden and stone clubs are widely used in various tasks among these communities. To give one example, the hakapik is a massive wooden club with a hammerhead on one end of the head of the club and a metal hook on the other end. Over the centuries, the hakapik has proven on many occasions to be a valuable tool to hunt down both four-legged and two-legged prey.

Description and Decoration According to accounts left by settlers, soldiers, and journalists, war clubs were especially popular amongst the North American Plains Indians. Here, Indians preferred stone-headed war clubs that took a variety of shapes. Handles were carved from hardwood and decorated with colors representing blood, warfare, protection, deities, or the afterlife. Often, human trophies such as scalps either lined or trimmed the end of the handle. Rawhide, buckskin, or sinew served to attach the stone club to the handle. Clubs like these could be up to 30 inches long in certain areas.

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Ceremonial clubs were much longer than war cubs and decorated with beads. Brandishing these clubs, warriors would stand amongst other warriors at some warrior post or gather to recount their war deeds. In one account that has come down to us, an Ojibway warrior by the name of Bebon Waushih recounts his war deeds with a ceremonial war club. Surrounded by the council elders at his warriors’ post, he told what he had done:

“On my very first expedition, a long time ago, Broken Wing was my War Chief. Our war party walked many days before we came upon the camp of the enemy. It was larger than we expected. It had more than fifty warriors.

We had but ten. Outnumbered, we could not storm the camp, and so, we waited in hiding, keeping watch on their movements. On the fourth day, our scouts spotted four of the enemy headed from the north. We hid on top of the ridge. The enemy walked below in the gully. They were laughing and talking, so we knew where they were. Broken Wing gave a signal, and we rushed upon the warriors. Being young and quick, I reached the enemy first. I leaped upon the one walking in front. Before he could raise his war club, I struck him down. Before he lay still, I reached out my knife and cut a portion of his scalp. On that day, I became a warrior . . . .”

Johnston, 1994:64.

In addition to the stone-headed war clubs and battle-axes were the ball-headed war club, gunstock war club, and tomahawk. Gunstock clubs, named so due to their similarity to the end portion of a musket, were used mainly by Eastern Woodland, Central, and Northern Plains tribes during the 18th and 19th centuries. The arrival of Europeans with their knowledge of metallurgy contributed to modifying existing war clubs to accept one or more blades. Adding these blades meant that those clubs were now capable of hooking, pulling, or thrusting motions with a threeinch or longer point(s). While the flat portion was ideal for slapping, the blunt end was good for crushing bone, and the pommel for jab-

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bing. Grips varied between each of the three points of the weapon, as portrayed in several 18th-century photos, such as blade face down, blade face up, or reverse grip. The reader should keep in mind that not every gunstock club has a blade.

Owners of war clubs often decorated them to enlist the power of the spirit world—or medicine as it is known in Native American culture connoting spirit, power, energy, or mystic potency. In North American spirituality, one accords a great reverence to the four directions and the circle, and this cosmology shapes almost everything an Indian does. From the four directions—West, North, East, and South—come the four winds. Na-

tive Americans taught that the world in all its mystery works in circles; and colors, paints, patterns, songs, dance, certain plants, and animals all had spiritual power and meaning. Animal parts, such as claws and feathers, human trophies, tattoos, shapes, places, persons, and objects, had some amount of power. For example, among the Wyandot, who once ranged across the state of Ohio, the word arendi means “spiritual power or medicine.” Medicine brought to the battlefield would enhance the warrior, so a warrior brought them onto the battlefield. There, he put his war paint, decorations, and weapons together with great attention and ceremony.

The act of bringing medicine weapons into battle was a vital aspect of a warrior preparing for battle. These were weapons brought solely for the attributes they would imbue upon the warrior. A warrior’s medicine shield or any other weapon could serve as a form of magical protection and power.

Decorations were not only a means of enhancing power but displaying the power residing within a weapon. Markings and colors could distinguish a warrior and his weapon from the others (especially significant when counting war deeds so the warrior could increase his status) and provide him with the skills to allow him to return home.

His social status, power, and expertise would be on full display

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in the way he decorated his horse, clothing, and himself. The trained warrior always kept more than one weapon at his, and sometimes her, disposal. For example, the gunstock club could have found use in conjunction with the war shield, lance, hawk, and knife.

In the Northeast, the ball-headed war club was a carved piece made typically of beechwood. This weapon was hand-held instead of being a throwing weapon. It had a thinner gripping area widening into a larger, fixed wooden ball at the end. Movements with the weapon were tight to mid-range, explosive, and hard. Tactics such as rushing, ambushing, and attacking the enemy head-on with the weapon were not uncommon. As with other war clubs, decorating them with beads, paints, carvings, hair, fur, and other animal parts made them a personal expression of each warrior.

Among the warriors of the Iroquois confederation, war clubs often depicted scalp and wound tallies, deities, and spirits revealed in his or her dreams. While on the other side of the continent in

what is now British Columbia, the Haida lined their war clubs with whale teeth and representations of totemic animals.

Iroquois warriors also carved their military exploits into the weapon, enumerating the number of enemy engagements they participated in and the number of captives they had taken and killed. At times, warriors inscribed their personal tattoo patterns onto their weapons. With this decoration, the weapons themselves became imbued with the power of the spirits, resulting in a substantial psychological effect upon the warriors’ enemies. Warriors were known to leave their club at the forefront of a gruesome massacre as a personal calling card for the carnage he had inflicted. Chroniclers noted this type of calling card during the time of King Philip’s War (16751678). After one fearsome battle, a survivor picked up a war club from the Seneca or Mohawk found lying on the ground. What made it such a special find was the decorations of the tattoos of its bearer and the tally of numerous scalps.

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In contrast to Iroquois custom, ball-headed war clubs along the Pacific Northwest coast had different markings. Wooden clubs shaped like police batons or baseball bats were carved and used in war and hunting. The animals inscribed on weapons provided the power of the animal. It also attracted the animal nearer in the case of hunting. The notebooks of Captain Cook describe the methods and technology of the Northwestern Indians in writing:

“These people (Nootka people, British Columbia) have bows, and arrows, spears, slings, short truncheons (clubs) made of bone and a small pick-axe . . . . From the number of their weapons, it may be reasonably concluded that they frequently engage in close combat; and we had very disagreeable proofs of their wars being both frequent and bloody, from the number of human skulls that were offered to us for sale.”

Cook, 1984:541.

Supporting this description, the book, Arms and Men On The Northwest Coast, describes how:

“Some of these clubs were made of ground stone, wood or bone and were lined with sea otter, shark or whale teeth for ripping the flesh. While the Indians of the northwest coast possessed projectile weapons, they relied much more on hand weapons. Clubs and daggers made of stone, bone, or hardwood, which were their favorite arms.”

Fisher, 1976:4.

Others were long and machete-shaped, some long paddles with carved handles and decorated to the degree that they were useless in combat; however, they had a unique societal and cultural importance.

The Polynesian warriors of Hawai’i had several types of clubs whose use and applications are handed down to those worthy of passing on the flame and of Huna na mea huna—keeping secret what is sacred. Some clubs were de-

signed for close-quarter combat.

As a rule, true koa’s today should not be elaborated further in this article beyond the names of the club/stick weapons themselves: ho’e (paddle), ko’okoko (short staff), ko’oko’o pokole (long staff), ku’eku’e (knuckle duster with shark teeth), lei-o-mano (club with shark teeth), maka pahoa ko’oko’o (double-edged dagger at the end of short staff), newa (club), palua’o newa (double clubs), and pike (15-foot spear).

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Tactics and Use Up and down the Mississippi river valley and surrounding tributaries, beginning around 3500 BC and lasting in a much diminished form until the late 16th century, many great urban centers rose up collectively known as the Mound Builders. These metropolises seemed to have served as a melting pot of native cultures from all four directions. The adoption of ritual practices, as well as artifactual, architectural, and artistic exchange can be found among many of the historic site remains. One of the largest cities, known as Cahokia, thrived from AD 1050 to 1350.

Here, several unique weapons have been uncovered by archeologists over the years: “On January 28th, 1948, a somewhat mind-boggling discovery occurred. A wooden object was found which seemed to be sort of a club.

On removal of the wood, five shark teeth were found with eight flint blades” (Perino, 1950:61).

The club—wooden, flat, and lined with great white shark teeth—was similar to Hawaiian clubs and was used for ripping, disarming, cutting, and slapping. Located thousands of miles away from the nearest ocean, in the Midwest at the

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Cahokia Mounds Site, the weapon itself dates back to about 12000 BC. The teeth are a product of the long-distance exchanges that crisscrossed the Americas centuries before Europeans set foot on the soil.

For the Mississippians of Cahokia, the bow, arrow, spear, atlatl, mace, stone-headed war club, stone war club, shark tooth war club, and the wooden club were their primary weapons.

Across the Southern Colorado Plateau and Upper Rio Grande drainage zone arose a wide group of communities who were known for building stone and earth dwellings on the sides of canyon walls (only accessible by rope ladders or narrow trails), great ceremonial houses, the construction of a 30-foot wide arrow-straight stretching for dozens of miles, and exquisite pottery. From 200 BC to AD 1500, the ancestors of present-day Pueblo Indians, known as the Anasazi, produced and used to great effect weapons known as fending sticks.

The scholar Ross Hassig speculated that the grooved and curved sticks served as short swords for close-range fighting (1988:294295). However, their use continued up throughout the present time as rabbit throwing sticks.

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Just South of the Anasazi In Southern Arizona and Northern Mexico, and not long after the Anasazi faded away, a vital weapon among the Pima Indians was the potato masher war club. The handle of this weapon ended in a sharp point while the head had an inverted truncated cone shape and was flat across the head. Pima warriors used the weapon in smashing blows and upward ramming motions into the face of the enemy combined with wrist rotation movements meant for pounding.

Blocking would be near impossible given the size and proportion of the club, and so warriors carried a shield for protection. In battle, a portion of the men fought with this club and a shield alone—covered with rawhide stretched over a cottonwood frame with a handle in the center. Piman-made shields also had a loop of rawhide by which they could sling them around their neck in a resting pose.

Furthermore, shields were decorated with swirls and dizzying patterns intended to disorient the enemy. Oral narratives tell how their designs and associated “magic dizzied those Apache who armed themselves with a lance, or bow.”

Once they were disoriented, it was easy to close in upon them and club them down. The Pima, Yuma,

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and Maricopa warriors would all wear thick fabrics, strong enough to withstand bladed assaults from the Apache. The Apache themselves eventually began to use the club as their lances were useless against the Pima, who had adapted to their constant ambushes.

Designed to make heads roll, the Apache war club was a fearsome weapon. A wooden handle met with a ball-head end was a deadly but simple weapon in the hands of a skilled warrior. It was one of the older Apache Indian weapons, and the Apache would make use of young trees to construct formidable war clubs. Then when the club began to decompose, it was discarded and a new one carved.

The Apache also utilized jawbone war clubs whose hitting point was the toothline of the jaw. The teeth were sometimes polished and sharpened to the degree they could cut through the enemy’s armor and flesh. Its handle was decorated with the typical hide and feathers, as functionality among the Apache was more important than decoration. Stone-headed tomahawks also saw use on the battlefield.

Moving further south into central and southern Mexico not too long after the abandonment of Cahokia for reasons we still do not under-

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stand, similar urbanized empires arose with their ways of waging war. The weapons of choice were long wooden war clubs and lances lined with inlaid, razor-sharp obsidian and used in warfare and duels. Both the macahuitl along with the lance were the main weapons of choice in the Valley of Mexico.

The name macahuitl derives from the Nahuatl language meaning hand-wood, and would have a longer handle or more extended bladed portion when used in combat.

The club often saw use in conjunction with a rounded, painted, and feathered hide shield. The weapon itself required wide sweeping motions meant to lop off limbs. The blades were fragile and unsuitable for impact as they would shatter, which made blocking a task primarily required of the shield.

According to Hernan Cortez, the weapon could cut the head clean off his horse. However, despite the technology that assisted in the survival of such a belligerent nation, its designs were no match for the long pikes and swords of the finest Toledo steel.

Further south in the Yucatan peninsula, a Mayan club was found in a sacred Cenote or well at Chichén Itzá. The club is a curved stick with longitudinal facial grooves and decorated with sacred colors and

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symbols. Archeologists also found similar weapons in the north of the valley of Mexico at Tula, the capital of the old Toltec empire, and various sites throughout northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Archeologists speculate that they acted as a defense weapon against atlatl darts.

Up high in the Andes mountains, the run-down western side of South America, Incan club and stick technology, in contrast to those further north, was entirely distinct in function, shape, and use. ​The Incas, who only reigned from 1488 to 1533, must have taken much of their knowledge from earlier empires that wielded battle-axes, heavy stone maces, and the macan ​​as sword-club into battle.​ ​The​ macana, a word of Taino Indian origin, ​was a type of sharpened sword-club used by Indians throughout Central and South America and is related to the macuahuitl of the Aztecs. The Inca developed a macana-spear with a long wooden handle and a stone or copper star-shaped head with six points. The macana was intended for use in close-quarter combat and could easily crush through skulls. The macan was either used separately or with other weapons as part of an arsenal that included boleadoras, spears, bows and arrows, and slings.

Aggressively expanding their rule while ruthlessly crushing their neighbor’s military forces, Incan armies relied on psychological warfare and intimidation tactics before any physical contact occurred.

Armies would approach the battlefield in complete silence at first.

Then troops would maneuver in an organized fashion to allow for military parades to break through the lines as a show of order, discipline, and combative ability. The exchange of challenge songs and responses followed by insults and taunts spurred the morale of the army. If the enemy did not retreat as a result of this show of force, the actual attack would begin. The first line of Incan soldiers would lob missile weapons at the enemy until hand-to-hand combat fighting occurred. If this did not lead the enemy to withdraw, the second wave of soldiers would round the flanks to surround to finish off or capture the enemy.

The overreliance on sheer numbers as a military tactic served well against their enemies in the region. But it would prove a great weakness upon the arrival of 168 disciplined and motivated Spanish in 1532. At the battle of Cajamarca, Spanish armed with guns, steel lances, and horses overwhelmed the Incan capital. They captured,

kidnapped, converted, removed, and submitted the Sapu Inca. They took his throne and claimed the land in the name of Spain and the church. While the Incan capital and the urban elite fell in a sudden swoop, Incan resistance in the countryside continued for many years, until finally, in 1572, the Spanish were able to capture the last Incan Emperor Túpac Amaru and sack his capital of Vilcabamba.

Going eastward over the crest of the Andes and descending into the Amazon river valley, warfare bloomed. The region’s war clubs were about chest height and useful for dramatic swings and harsh

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blows that were able to crush bone and open skulls. Such was their effectiveness that they were the desired weapon of the jungle before machetes and, much later, guns.

These war clubs were often utilized as canoe seats until conflict arose in which the weapon was available for a swift deployment in combat.

Other clubs were paddle-shaped, sword-shaped, cube-shaped, dagger-shaped, wooden-ax-shaped, and spatulate-shaped. These paddle-shaped clubs and spatulate-shaped clubs were used all up and down the Orinoco river valley and used among the Arekuna, Wapishana, Makusi, Arawak, Warrau, Oyana, Koróa, and Umáua. Like the macana and macahuitl, these clubs had a thin edge capable of causing cutting blows though not sharp enough to lop off limbs.

Indians living along the coastal forests of northeastern Brazil

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were known collectively as the Tupi. In the face of conflict, they armed themselves with bows and the two-handed paddle war clubs, poison darts, and spear-throwers. In contrast, one of the Tupi Indian groups, known as the Tapiruru, employed an atlatl alongside the club, which was wielded in their free hand and could efficiently serve as a fending stick and a secondary weapon. According to one Dutch commander, “. . . they fight with bows and arrows, javelins with stone points and wooden clubs” (​Barlaeus, 1647:323-24).

Armed with spatulate-shaped tapered clubs with handles wrapped in cords, these Indians proved to be a fearsome enemy. The mercenary John G. Stedman wrote a book of his life fighting against the Indians and maroons of South America in the mid-1770s, describing a flared quadrilateral war club:

“I must not forget that every Indian carries a club, which they call Apootoo, for their defense. These clubs, made of the heaviest wood in the forest, are about eighteen inches long, flat at both ends, square, but heavier at one end than the other. In the middle, they are thinner and are wound about with strong cotton threads, to be grasped, having a loop to secure them around the wrist, as the sword-tassels are used by some cavalry. One blow with this club, which is frequently fixed, a sharp stone scatters the brains.

These are used by the Guiana Indians like the tomahawk by the Cherokees, on which, besides other hieroglyphical figures, they often carve the number of persons slain in battle.”​ Stedman, 1796: 396-397.

Clubs attributed to the Carib or Culima in the Guianas and the Orinoco-Amazonian lowlands had carved representations of serpent goddess, water, and frog spirits into them. These designs invoked the spirits into their lives. They also served to show one’s status as a warrior by displaying marks of those they have killed. The peoples of the Amazon often smoked

tobacco mixed with other natural substances to intoxicate themselves before a battle, to enhance warfare, hunting, and healing, and to commune with the spirits and the deceased. As both a spiritual and belligerent practice, the hallucinogenic plants yakoana, ebene, and yopo are part of everyday life.

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In conclusion, stick and club technologies have evolved far from the simple rabbit hunting stick and into a wide range of culturally distinct and engineered weapons that were effective to the survival of not only the Native Americans but the entire human race. To record the history of war clubs, including their cultural and ceremonial importance and historical evolution across the Americas, would be a lifelong project. A lifetime would pass before one could record every detail, advancement, methodology, and cultural symbol or practice, even by committed groups of individuals. That is why a group such as NAWA, consisting of contributing members, researchers, historians, and combative experts, is not only a great historical/cultural resource but a living tradition meant to keep the warrior arts alive and remembered in their entire glory.

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SELECTED REFERENCE

Bethany J. Dillon’s book, War-Torn: A Look At Warfare In North America Before European Influence and its sequel, War-Torn: The Arrival.

Perino, Greg. “Cultural Clues From Cahokia.” In Cahokia Brought To Life, edited by R.E. Grimm, 59-61. Greater St. Louis Archaeological Society, 1950.

Stedman, John Gabriel. Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam. Original 1790 manuscript edited by Richard and Sally Price. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1992.

Bethany J. Dillon @bethany.dillon.90

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THE ITALIAN STICK FIGHTING TRADITION A JOURNEY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE CONTEMPORARY ERA Dr. Marco Quarta

ITALY IS LIKE AN ALCHEMIC furnace: different cultures merged, transformed and forged into something new and unique for centuries. Beginning our story with the glory that was once Rome, the Italian peninsula was the center of an international culture, where arts converged and evolved. The history of Italian martial arts is no exception. Indeed, the name “Arts of Mars,” or Art of the Roman God of War Mars, suggests how relevant these arts were among the ancient Romans. Characterized by vibrant military culture, Romans emerged onto the Indo-European landscape with unique tactical and technical martial legacies. Foremost, it was the legions military technology that enabled Rome, over several centuries, to conquer much of western Europe, parts of Asia, and the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

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Source: Atalanta Fugiens (1617) by Michael Maier.

Similarly, martial rituals, such as the gladiator fights, whose roots lie in central Italy’s even more ancient Etruscan culture, were disseminated and popularized across the Roman Empire.

Moreover, strongly influenced by the ancient Greeks, martial arts evolved around the cult of the Hero. The original Olympic games

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held from 776 BC to AD 393 were based on martial exercises and trials. The winner was elevated to the status of Hero, inspired by the mythological champions, and crowned with the leaves of the laurel tree. Arts such as orthepale (standing grappling), pale (ground wrestling), pychmachia (pugilism), or pankration (all-in fighting), did not die in Greece or Rome.

Lottatori pancrazio, Roma, 3rd century BC, Villa Medici.

Medieval Stick Fencing The use of the stick as a weapon martial art was a key part of these traditions. Writing in the 4th-5th century AD, the Roman author Publio Vegezio Renato, in his Epitoma rei militaris, recounts soldiers trained in the use of the gladio (sword), using simulacra (wood trainers). Similar practices continued for centuries in Italy. During the medieval era, a significant

number of documents show the use of sticks and swords together.

Additionally, there are many medieval paintings and miniatures showing images of duels with sticks.

An example is the painting entitled the “Duel of Champions.” Often these images show the fighter using a secondary weapon or a pro-

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tection on their left hand, such as a cloth or a small shield. The use of the second hand is a typical characteristic of the Italian fighting styles, which will become perfected later during the Renaissance, with the use of the spada e daga—the rapier and dagger. Italian fencing is known as scherma accompagnata, or accompanied-by-the-other-hand fencing. In particular, the practices of double swords and double sticks were an essential aspect of Italian martial art traditions. Fiore de’i Liberi’s Flos Duellatorum (The Flower of Battle) (1409), is probably the most important late medieval manuscript of Italian martial arts. In this work, Liberi presents a practical fighting manual based on his direct experience as a warrior on the battlefields and a master instructor of European knights.

Writing in Latin, Liberi, in the introduction, describes how he survived many duels against one or multiple opponents using these arts. Liberi then decided to pass his secrets to nobles and princes through his manuscripts, which have proved difficult for us in the modern age to decipher. Switching to Italian, Liberi describes the different guards, techniques, and tactics he had used. Liberi goes on to display a comprehensive and variegated plethora of unarmed and

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armed arts, including wrestling, dagger, swords, armored combat, or horse-mounted combat. Reinforcing his readers’ view of himself as an instructor of the highest caliber, Liberi portrays himself as a “crowned master armed with two sticks” in his book. Underneath the image, the words of the master state, “E quello che cum bastone faco cum la spada lo faria,” or “And what I can do with a stick, I can do with the sword.” Similarly, a few years later, one Filippo Vadi represents himself in De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi (The Art of Fighting with Swords) (1482), in the identical guard as Liberi using two sticks.

The Renaissance and the Science of Fighting In Italy, during the transition between the medieval and the Renaissance periods, we learn from historical documents that martial arts curricula revolved around the use of various swords, daggers, unarmed fighting, and sticks. In particular, the city of Bologna played a critical role. Here in Bologna, the first university in the world was established in AD 1088, spawning a multitude of academic sciences.

Among these, martial arts became a science itself, called scherma, or fencing. During this time, scherma was described by the Renaissance

Masters as “the art of efficiently defending while counter-attacking.” Tirar di scherma, or “doing fencing,” at this time did not mean only sword fencing, but also shortrange fencing with the dagger alone as well as the dagger and the stick. Demonstrating the wide variety of armed combat available at the time, a Guido Antonio di Luca was teaching stick fencing, along with long sword or sword and buckler or the small shield. In the work La Verra Antigua (The Ancient Truth) (1550), a fencing master by the name of Caravia presented a detailed technical description of a fight between two warriors using sticks, drawing on the terminology and techniques or guards used for sword fencing at the time.

Moreover, during the Renaissance in Italy, martial games based on stick fencing were widespread across the peninsula. An interesting example is the Battagliole, or “Battle,” in the medieval city-state of Venice every other year. At this time, the bravest working-class men of the two main factions of the city would arm themselves with thick heavy fire-hardened sharpened staves and don armor or some form of protection. Suitably attired, they met on the opposite side of one of the footbridges linking the islands in the Venice

Source: Flos Duellatorum (1409) by Fiore de’i Liberi, Pisani Dossi manuscript.

Source: La verra antiga dei Castellani, Canaruoli, e Gnatti (1550) by Alessandro Caravia, Venice.

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Source: Trattato teorico-pratico della scherma di bastone (1854) by Giocanni Cerri.

The Modern Era lagoon. At the sound of a whistle blown by a referee, men would rush at each other, belaboring and thrusting at each other with murderous intent. If the blows with the stick failed to subdue an opponent, he could be tossed over the guard rails or forced over by the squeeze of men eagerly seeking to get a few blows in of their own. To forestall a watery death, men from each faction would wait in small boats near the bridge, ready to pull their waterlogged compatriots out of the water and onto the boats before they sank to the bottom of the canal. Far from being an isolated curiosity, there are documents and reports of legal duels using sticks all across the kingdoms of the Italian Renaissance.

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In Italy, the science of fighting evolved across the centuries, and stick fencing was part of this evolution. If we jump to the 19th century, we find a rich literature by fencing masters publishing books on stick fencing. For example, there is the manuscript by Giuseppe Cerri, Trattato teorico-pratico della scherma di bastone (Treatise on the Theoretical-Practical Use of Stick Fencing) (1854). Both this one and Francesco Cajol’s Guida Pel Maestro di Scherma di Bastone (Guide for the Master of the Stick Fencing) (1865), focus on two-handed long sticks. Conversely, Giovanni Ceselli’s Giuoco Ginnico di Bastone (Exercise with the Stick) (1902) deals with one-handed stick fencing. Miannino Martinelli’s Trattato di scherma

col bastone da baseggio (Treatise of Fencing with the Walking Stick) (1908) describes specialized fencing techniques for self-defense, teaching how to fence with walking sticks or canes. During this time, the use of stick fencing derived from an academic and military tradition of Italian martial arts.

Also, for these reasons, styles and schools of traditional Italian stick fencing survived history and persist today. In Genoa, for example, the Bastone Genovese is still taught

by Claudio Parodi. Fighting with a staff and walking stick, knife, and unarmed fighting styles based on a pre-sportive form of Greco-Roman wrestling all make up its curriculum. Moving a little more north, in

Milan, the fencing tradition of the Manusardi family has continued for generations. Currently, Lorenzo Ravazzani Manusardi teaches modern fencing, the dueling art of swords, Italian one-handed canne, the two-handed long stick, and traditional pugilism, which includes kicks, similarly to Le Boxe Francaise. Signore Manusardi is a professional fencing master like his uncle Renato Manusardi and his famous grandfather, Italo Manusardi, a fencing champion and instructor of the last century. Italo was a skilled stick fighter, swords fencer, and an expert in pugilism who fought successfully all across Europe.

Source: Trattato di scherma col bastone da passeggio (1908) by Giannino Martinelli.

Source: Del Bastone manuscript (late 18th / early 19th century) by Adolfo Borromei.

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The Regional Lineages

Cielo e Meraviglia

We briefly described above how fencing evolved from the medieval era to the emergence of the Renaissance Bolognese School and then in the 19th century into a sophisticated academic, aristocratic, and military tradition. Since the medieval age, we have learned from historical documents that a “popular” version of the stick fighting arts was also present in Italy. Martial art traditions were also widespread among shepherds and farmers, who carried a stick with them daily. For many of them, the sword was expensive, prohibitive, and unfamiliar.

A magnificent example is the Italian region called Puglia, an area rich in schools and traditions of stick fighting arts. In the North of Puglia, particularly in the Ofantina Valley, the fighting art called Cielo e Meraviglia, or Heaven and Marvel, persisted. Not a dueling art, the Cielo e Meraviglia instead focuses mostly on self-defense.

From the evidence we possess, it is thought that this art evolved from 18th century Italian fencing traditions prevalent in the region at the time. Emerging from a harsh rural environment known as the Masserie, the Frantoiani (owners of small olive tree orchards) lived in small walled villages for protection from neighboring large landowners or bandits. The Frantoiani could not afford to pay private soldiers and warriors for their protection. Due to necessity, they developed specific methods with the stick and the knife—their common tools— instead. This school’s recreational or dueling aspects are indeed minimal due to the hard life, isolation, and limited social life in the Masserie. Instead, the school is characterized by fighting within a very close distance of one’s enemy and uses not only a sophisticated strategy but also physical strength and skill, typical of Frantoiani due to

Nevertheless, these people lived a harsh and dangerous life. They developed stick fighting arts to defend themselves, often generated or inspired by the other military or academic fencing arts. Several of these traditions persisted all around Italy, frequently conserved among family styles or in secret societies. Many of these styles are still alive today.

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their harsh and rough life. Cielo e Meraviglia was more popular in the past centuries, even if the masters of this art kept their knowledge amongst themselves. At present, the only instructors alive at this time are Nunizo Galante and Domenico Mancino, both of whom learned at a young age from Nunzio’s grandfather and other skilled Frantoiani. Domenico Mancino defines the school he inherited more like an artisanal art, based on

master-to-student direct teaching and measured learning. This approach is opposed to other traditions of the region focused on ritual dueling, where the art is instead transmitted to a broader audience or shared in social events. In the tradition of Cielo e Meraviglia, one can use the stick with one or both hands. Techniques and tactics operate at both long and short-range distances.

Master Domenico Mancino demonstrating Cielo e Meraviglia, late 20th century.

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Stick Fighting in Manfredonia The area of Manfredonia, or as it was initially known, Sipontum, was settled in ancient times by the Greeks. Local traditions tell that Diomedes, a hero in the Trojan War, founded the town. Long a flourishing town, Sipontum was a colony of the Samnites, an ancient Italian people the Romans feared and hated passionately. For a short time, the town fell into the hands of Alexander of Epirus, uncle of Alexander the Great, in 335 BC. Rome finally extended its rule over the region in 189 BC, and the town became a major port along the Adriatic Sea. After the Roman empire fell, Germanic Lombard Kings of Italy and Byzantine emperors fought over the town. It was even sacked and burnt by Slavic raiders in the 9th century. For a time, the town served as a base by Arab slave raiders from the emirates of Sicily. Earthquakes, malaria, and slave raids led to the town’s almost total abandonment until the last Hohenstaufen King of Sicily, Manfred, relocated the few inhabitants left and moved them a few miles north to the newly built town of Manfredonia in 1250. Over the centuries, the multicultural environment of the bustling port with its inhabitants and visitors affected and shaped the fencing arts of Manfredonia.

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Regarding its martial traditions, it was common to giocare, or play, limited-contact types of sparring and practice stick and knife fencing on the boat trips crossing the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas. Naturally, this led to a lot of cross-cultural martial influences.

Although initially used by the locals to protect themselves against wild animals and bandits, eventually, the art turned into a gioco, or game, of fighting ability and dueling among champions of different families and groups. Traditionally, this knowledge is passed only within a family. In these modes of transmission, the father did not teach his son but his brother’s son, while his brother took over his nephew’s education and training. There are several reasons for this. Partially, this tradition belongs to ancient knight orders and a knight’s training and education.

As it took shape in Manfredonia, around the age of seven, a father would send his young son to his uncle to learn the art of stick and knife combat to teach filial piety.

The son must always show respect and deference to the father and could never strike him. The father could be his advisor but could never act as his mentor in the art.

Interestingly, the art has its own language, called the lingua serpentina (language of the snake), or Favella (The word), a secret coded language used to share the rules of conduct of the art among initiates of the secret societies in the region. Different levels of understanding would accrue to the initiate depending on his rank.

From these ancient traditions and communities, across the centuries, these societies became known as onorata societas, or societies of honor. Then for historical rea-

sons, it was divided into two orders: first, the Uomini di Vita (Men of Life and Honor), also known as Cavalieri di Umilta (Knights of Humility); and the latter became known as the Uomini di Malavita (Men of Bad Life). Later on, these Men of Bad Life would form underground criminal organizations such as Mafia, Camorra, and the ‘Ndrangheta. The Men of Life were men of peace, operating in a closed hierarchical rule-based group. The leader was called Capo di societa (Head of the society) or Capo ba-

Trimigno family of Manfredonia, mid-20th century.

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stone (Leader of the stick). He acted as a judge and a peace-keeper in his town or region, where the common people consulted with him for the many issues and problems they faced. The first written documentation, showing the official establishment of these organized societies in Manfredonia, dates back only to 1920. Still, according to the oral histories, its roots go back to the time of the crusades.

Trimigno Family Apulian Stick Fighting In the city of Manfredonia, many different families continue, in a secretive way, to carry on their art of stick fighting. Kept secret for historical reasons for centuries, the art of Bastone Pugliese, or the Apulian stick, has now been codified and taught as a family style. In 2011, competitors from all over Italy and parts of Europe came to the area to compete in the first Italian stick fighting championship. The region of Puglia is also known for the Scherma di Coltello Pugliese, or Apulian knife, which is expressed as three local styles: Taranto, Foggia/Bari, and Brindisi/Lecce.

One of the most known experts of this art is Maestro Luciano Trimigno, who learned the art from his father and his grandfather, one of

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the most renewed knife and stick fighters of the last century. He learned within the tradition of Foggia/Bari, which, based on family oral traditions, is believed to be originated from ancient chivalric codes based on honor. In particular, this tradition emerges out of the dueling art. Today, the entire family of Master Luciano Trimigno (including his father, now an old man, his cousins, and his son Giuseppe) is involved in running the school.

By contrast, as it developed in Manfredonia, the fighting style is the result of many different influences, intrinsically embedded into the history of the harbor-city, as we noted above. In this multicultural environment, different influences affected and shaped the fencing arts. The Apulian stick is a tapered hardwood stick held by the thin side. In the past, peasants, farmers, and shepherds typically trained their art underneath the cactus-fig plants or ancient olive trees whose fruit they depended on for their livelihood. Different from other lineages in Manfredonia, the Trimigno family also has a tradition of using 28-inch (70 cm) thin hardwood sticks or manichetta, used singly or with one in each hand.

Vuovolo Stick Fighting School In Manfredonia, related to the Cavalieri d’Umilita, is another school under the leadership of Giuseppe Vuovolo. Giuseppe Vuovolo describes his school as rooted in codes of honor and ancient warrior ethics. Giuseppe Vuovolo himself explains: “In our tradition, the adept is expected to sacrifice for the weak and to fight for the Truth.” In his youth, Maestro Vuovolo experienced many different Italian traditions learning or fighting with those he met traveling through the South of Italy in his youth. Due to his varied adventures, the method he learned has evolved and differentiated itself. In particular, his stick fencing school tradition was passed to him by a Maestro Borgia at a young age. Interestingly, he also learned the fighting arts with knives and sticks from Aupilian Gypsies.

In this tradition, adepts take a vow to assist, discreetly and in secrecy, justice for anyone in need. They support and mentor the youth based on the ethics of honor and humility. Also, they train fighters in such a way as to instill in them a strong and stable personality, mediated with sympathy and wisdom. The students here learn the ancient fencing art, in particu-

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the community, mediate conflicts, bring wisdom, and restore peace and order. One does not volunteer; one must be chosen. Only then is it possible to reach the “source of humility,” based on esoteric traditions. Candidates and their family members must have a clean and honorable history and background for seven generations. The apprentice is then instructed on the regole di vita, or rules of life, to learn how to conduct their new life based on honor and tolerance, trained to manage fear and to develop a brave heart, with a lucid, focused, and moral mindset in every situation.

The adept is rigorously prepared in challenging physical training.

They are educated in mastering fighting and defense with empty hands, with a stick, and with the coltello chiuso (closed knife), or a fusto (thin, flexible stick).

Cavalieri di Umilta of Manfredonia, late 19th century,

lar, the knife and stick. With this knowledge, they can defend those in need and maintain order and peace in their community, following the codes laid down by the ancient knights’ orders to which they trace the origin of their society.

Masters of this art vow to defend

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A well-remembered local champion of this system was Matteo ‘Ntrlingh’, who lived early in the 20th century. After learning this art from a local elder, he moved to Buenos Aires, where he challenged others in a series of public tournaments, earning himself the title of “Champion of Argentina,” before returning to his homeland, in Manfredonia. Back home, he formed and trained a select number of candidates. Their legacy

is still alive today. The School of the Cavalieri d’Onore e Umilta of Giuseppe Vuovolo maintains and preserves these ancient traditions.

Maintaining the purity of the art passed down to him by all his instructors, Master Vuovolo has committed himself to train new generations of Knights of Humility, preparing them in the ethics and honor of the Code, respecting the law, the order and justice, and the martial art practices. Giuseppe Vuovolo and the other masters of this tradition teach in private and

public places, sometimes giving public tournaments and exhibitions during special celebrations or in local festivals in the area of Manfredonia. Maestro Vuovolo is also an expert in other martial arts, for which he opened his first school in the 1970s.

Scherma Salentina In the south of Apulia, there is another martial tradition known as the scherma salentina, or fencing from Salento, based on sticks and knives. Part of the Brindisi/Lecce

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fencing style, this tradition is probably one of the oldest styles in the region. It is a sword/knife dance known as Pizzica—The Dance of Knives—or as it is also known, The Dance of Swords. Also, part of a fencing and dancing tradition, the martial art is still alive and practiced in the town of Torrepaduli during the Festa of San Rocco. The Festa of San Rocca is a sacred celebration where local fencing societies and their instructors gather to challenge each other. These challenges are friendly, but old or new issues are sometimes brought up and resolved during the challenge, blurring the line between a friendly match and a serious duel.

Most of the time, the challenges of the time are resolved in the Ronde,

or Dancing Duels, where the two men are surrounded by a circle of people and music players. During the Ronde, the fencers adhere to specific rules and follow secret coded movements to hide the different master’s secrets and tricks.

In this way, the fencing masters use the dance to resolve conflict without dueling with real blades or sticks. Some of the known instructors are: Leonardo Donadei, son of the famous and great fencing Maestro and Knight Don Raffaele Donadei, Flavio Olivares, Alfredo Barone, and his son Salvatore Barone. A long-term student and public conduit to the art is Dr. Davide Monaco, who currently runs the semi-public school in Lecce.

Sicily and Other Regions Another Italian region that is rich in Italian martial stick arts traditions is Sicily. Several families and martial art lineages still populate the Italian island that was colonized by kingdoms and empires all around the Mediterranean for thousands of years. To mention a few examples: in Riposto, Catania, a Maestro Carmelo Tangona and his family teach a two-handed stick style, together with a short stick; in Siracusa, Maestro Raffaele Irmino teaches the paranza, using a small stick that is also the base for a specific Sicilian knife style; in Vastumi, close to Palermo, the Piazza family teaches a long stick style that can be handled with one or two hands.

Other regions have their stick styles, such as the taccaro in Naples. Here, a very short stick was used in close range, while the verra, a long and heavy stick, resembles the medieval bordone, a heavy stick used by the road traveler for centuries. The variety in length, shape, weight, and material of Italian sticks is rich and complicated and would require a separate article to elucidate fully.

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Conclusion Our journey is coming to an end.

In this article, we explored a few examples of how the Italian Peninsula collected and evolved martial arts in a “genome” unique to its own throughout two and a half millennia. All these arts share a common structure, highlighted and brought to perfection by the scienza della scherma—science of fencing and fighting—based on precise principles such as modo, tempo, and misura (geometry, timing and measure). Even in modern times, in regional or family traditions, we can identify the commonalities of the fencing structure, ter-

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minology, and principles across all Italian martial stick arts. However, each lineage and tradition evolved its peculiarities, styles, strategies, and techniques. This phenomenon is the result of the diverse cultural, local, and social histories of the areas and the needs of the people who kept the arts alive. But this is Italy. It is a beautiful and unique country so rich in conflicting historical layers that it is inevitable to get entangled in its thousands of colors, musical languages, delicious varieties of food, unique genetic traits, and of course, its beautiful martial arts.

Dr. Marco Quarta @marco4quarta

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JOGO DO PAU AND THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DUELING AND GROUP COMBAT Pedro Silva

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I STILL REMEMBER THE DAY I googled about the jogo do pau schools. Except for a couple of posts, it seemed that there was nobody actively practicing it in the North of the country. My curiosity got the best of me, though, and I had to visit the places mentioned and ask around. So, one day I got in my car and off I went with just a camera and my curiosity.

That day, the decision I made proved to be the best choice I made in my entire martial arts career.

What I found along the years blew my mind! What I found gave me the keys I needed to understand the combat arts beyond the dueling context and understand the art of fencing.

Jogo do pau is a traditional Portuguese fighting art. The practitioner uses a wooden staff, reaching to nose height. The use of the staff relies on a two-handed grip, although sometimes a one-handed grip is employed. It’s one of the few European martial arts that still exist more or less as practiced one hundred years ago.

The word jogo has a double meaning—it can mean skill or game.

The word pau means stick or staff.

In this way, the term jogo do pau is the “skillful use of the staff,” or the “staff game.” It’s important to

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point out that the word jogo is also used in the Spanish, French, and Italian fencing cultures to describe their indigenous combative arts.

Although there are no known documents about the origin, there is no dispute that jogo do pau came from the North of Portugal and/or the old Galiza, or Galician territory. This area of the northeastern Iberian peninsula at one time had been alternately under the rule of Spain and Portugal hundreds of years ago. According to the documents we have available today, the first mentions of jogo do pau date back to 1825. The honor of publishing the first instructional manual goes to the city of Guimarães in 1886. Based on oral histories handed down to us, we are sure it is much older than this.

During the 19th century, jogo do pau was an activity only practiced in the North of the country. For the North of Portugal, the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century proved to be difficult times. Farmers, fishermen, and merchants in the North began migrating to the urban areas of the South seeking a better life. Bringing with them everything they could pack on their back, they also brought along the sticks and their knowledge of jogo do pau.

In the modern urban city of Lisbon, the old village art of jogo do pau transformed from a village art of self-defense once used by men to protect themselves from gangs of bullies, bandits, thieves, or packs of wild animals. In a new place under modern conditions, it became more refined and domesticated.

Here, the old village art of attack and defense was transformed and taught as a dueling game where two similarly armed contestants fought each other. These changes never made their way back up North; the old ways of doing jogo

do pau remained strong. In the North, the art focused more on one man fighting multiple opponents. Not only was it taught differently, but it also had a minimal number of blows in its repertoire.

Let us pause here and take a step back to put this shift from village fighting art to combative sport in a historical context. The idea of sports as an institutionalized rulebound game played between equals on a level playing field emerged in the 19th century. Like the rest of Europe at the time, physical enthusiasts in Portugal caught up in

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this sports craze, introduced foreign sports into the country, and transformed local pastimes into indigenous sports. Jogo do pau underwent a similar yet different route, though. Nevertheless, resisting the pull to become a standardized sport, jogo do pau eventually became a dueling art in the more urban South. Back in the North, up through the 1980s, the area of Fafe still relied on the staff to resolve disputes. At times these conflicts were between two men, and other times one man found himself facing enemies from all sides. Statistical evidence collected for a study on the presence of jogo do pau in Fafe suggested that in the 1980s, approximately 90% of the men in Fafe had some facility with jogo do pau, and no man would leave his house without carrying his staff in his hand.

In the small villages of the North where jogo do pau still exists, the men worked hard and did not have internet access until recently. In their downtime, many young men, like their fathers and grandfathers before them, played jogo do pau to while away the time and increase their skill with the staff in case the need arose. For these men, playing jogo do pau was as normal as playing football in the backyard for

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Mestre José Leite Quéu, around 1980.

young people in the more urban areas of Europe. For a few, it is a tradition that runs in their blood.

Unfortunately, jogo do pau is slowly disappearing in its old heartlands.

I’ve found a few different places where the staff culture still exists in some form or is undergoing a revival. However, the only place in the North where I found it to be alive and growing is in the northern Portugal region of Fafe; there is a village by the name of Cepães.

Throughout the region, jogo do pau was very popular up through the late 20th century. However, one man did notice the declining

interest of young people to pick up the stick and jogar. Seeing this potential loss of an intangible cultural heritage by the youth, one man by the name of José Leite, popularly known as Mestre Quéu—or in English, Instructor Quéu—took on the task of increasing the popularity of the art of jogo do pau back to what it once was. He talked to many of the elders in the region

and brought together many local practitioners to help preserve and spread the art. Although he died in the 1980s, Mestre Quéu’s legacy lives on. Two of his students, José Avelino and José Carlos, each with more than 50 years of experience playing jogo do pau, continue to teach around Fafe in the way they learned long ago.

UNDERSTANDING JOGO DO PAU Let me begin this section by defining some terms as we understand them so I can delve deeper into an explanation of the art.

Dueling Duels are combative acts conducted with two similarly armed people fighting within a set of mutually understood rules. The goal is to disable, draw first blood, or kill the other person.

Group Combat Then there are types of combat where one person faces a group or two groups of combatants facing each other. In these melee types of fights, there is usually an unequal or asymmetrical number of jogadores (players), between the groups, or the men are asymmetrically armed. For each of the groups involved, the goals of the outcome are different. In the case of the outnumbered group, the principal aim is to survive, escape, or delay the fight. Among those with the numerical advantage, the goal is to kill, disable, or capture those they face.

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In the stories passed down in Fafe, men relied on jogo do pau when faced with unequally numbered melee situations and one-onone dueling encounters. Overall, though, groups of armed men ambushing one or two people was a genuine threat in the recent past, and as such, learning to deal with these types of situations was stressed in training.

Asymmetrical combat is the most common and dangerous form of fighting. Combative encounters like these often led to both antagonists and sometimes bystanders ending up in the hospital. At times people would die as a result of their injuries. As is common throughout many parts of the world where state control is weak, and there is a tendency for people to resort to violence to resolve interpersonal disputes, vendettas and blood feuds are a regular occurrence. They can last for years and get passed down

as part of a family inheritance.

Many of these blood feuds had their beginnings over events relatively minor, such as a bad joke, perceived slights or an insult, all the way up to more serious issues of cattle rustling, or a woman’s affection or lack of such.

The prevalence of a feuding culture became such a threat to public safety that at one time, the National Police issued an edict forbidding men to bring a staff to the local weekend trade fairs, a site where most fights occurred. Remember, this was a rural area with people’s

homes scattered across vast areas, and stores and markets were far away. Locals would regularly attend these weekend markets to buy and sell food they grew or livestock they raised, or salesmen would bring in goods, clothes, or other needed items from larger cities. Weekend markets were also an opportunity for men to get together after working on their farms all week and meet up for a cup or two of wine or up to 120-proof locally distilled aguardente, talk, and socialize. Needless to say, this was the site where many fights began

The two Mestres in Cepães school: José Avelino and José Carlos Melo. Castro Daire, Portugal, June 2018.

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and took place too. On the other hand, This was also a place to pass the time, evaluate one’s skills, or establish one’s reputation for possessing superior skills among friends and neighbors.

There was a time back in the 1940s when local festivals held jogo do pau competitions. Before beginning, a few rules were agreed upon, and a referee whose opinion was

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respected was chosen from among the crowd.

Group fighting is, as we all know, far different from deuling. It is not that one is superior to the other; it’s just two distinct components of combat. It’s impossible to compare their true essence.

Let’s delve into this in greater detail.

Mindset, Context, and Aims The wrong mindset will get you in trouble. Mindset must be in line with one’s goals. The context of the situation determines one’s intentions. In analyzing a situation, it’s essential to know the skills and abilities of those a man faces.

There are always explicit or informal understandings of how combat takes shape among those embroiled in a fight. Dueling is always rule-bound, contrary to many people’s ideas of fighting as pure chaos with no cultural norms, rules, or understandings. Winning occurs through mutually agreed-upon understandings of actions such as drawing first blood, damaging the opponent so that he cannot continue, or through a judge or contestants’ decision to stop. Duels to the death were a lot less common for legal reasons and the threat of blood feuds. Dueling is also far less stressful than the melee fights because the rules are often agreed to in advance of the combat, meaning the number of variables that can come into play is far less numerous and, therefore, easier to control.

Due to the controlled nature of this form of combat, dueling tends to be more abundant in variations, tricks, and cunningness. Finally, there is more space for personal creativity and self-expression.

Other pre-arranged understandings in a duel limit the variables involved, thereby shaping the way a duel unfolds—how victory is to be achieved or acknowledged, whether or not fighting will take place on level ground, whether or not a duel will occur with an even number of combatants on each side, if both parties will arm themselves with similar weapons, and the wearing of any protective equipment, are all crucial factors to agree upon. Due to these conditions, the individual’s skill level has a more substantial impact on the outcome of the action than more informal types of combat.

Training for a duel, one’s skill set tends to develop over time through hours of repetitive movements. Individuals seek to sharpen the attributes, attacks, and defenses they find most natural and useful. Some prefer to close in and end the combat quickly. Others might prefer to move around and be content to counter and move away, wearing the other man down or running out the clock. We all can see that phenomenon in any dueling game, be it sports or not—boxing, grappling, chess, stick fighting, judo, Olympic fencing, etc. In each case, the individual acting within a sys-

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tem of rule-bound cultural activities shapes the way the combat proceeds. This understanding is plain to see in jogo do pau when playing contra–jogo (group games) or dueling with each other one on one.

Various elements of combat, such as attacks, defenses, footwork, and tactics, must be tailored specifically for the type of combative situation one engages in to attain the goals one set out to achieve.

Melee fighting is a different animal.

To engage in a melee type of combat, one must pay attention to at least two particular factors unique to this type of encounter. Melee combat is a form of combat where two sides possess their own weapons, tactics and strategies, and mindsets. First, let us look at the outnumbered side and assume all those involved are similarly armed.

The critical factors in this combative mode come out of the number of attackers and the type of terrain in which the attack is taking place.

For the outnumbered, the mindset is not about winning but surviving.

One is being set upon by a group of people with a serious intent to injure those they face. At these times, almost every rule is out the window. As regards one’s mental state: chaos, uncertainty, fear, euphoria, fast decision making, and fatigue are factors that will shape how the

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combat evolves and finishes. Tactically speaking, the outnumbered tries instead to survive or delay the start of the fight, wait for reinforcements, or sacrifice oneself and take the beating for the greater good of the family or the village.

On the other side, we have the force with superior numbers whose tactics, mindset, and goals are entirely different from the outnumbered. In jogo do pau, we practice a melee game called the roda do meio, or “in-the-middle-of-thecircle game.” Here, a group of men known as picadores (pike-men) surrounds one man known as the batedor (striker). In this game, the dominant-numbered group is like a group of predatory hyenas hunting a buffalo. The dominant-numbered group will maneuver in the realms of possibility, taking advantage of opportunities, reviewing tactics, and monitoring risks at their pace. They control the fight; they are patient, cautious, and deadly. The outnumbered group, by contrast, must react to the moves of the dominant-numbered group.

Strategy and Tactics Many people mix or abuse these terms. Strategy is a plan of action designed to win a war, while tactics are the steps used to win a battle.

A strategy is concerned with the long term, and tactics are focused on the short term. Valid strategies are the ones that fit both the context and the goals of a situation.

Logical tactics are the ones that obey and fit a strategic plan. From this, it follows that, since one-on-

one dueling and melee combat are two different modes of combat, each mode calls for its own strategy and set of tactics. It may strike you as a familiar refrain, but it is profoundly true; the primary strategy in jogo do pau, as in any other combative art, is to strike and not be struck. It is as simple as that!

One can identify and train general tactics involved in such a strat-

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egy, with different variations and personal traits or tricks that each player keeps up his sleeve, making each combative act a unique encounter. In contrast, however, in melee types of combat, there are two additional strategic ideas in addition to the one-off striking and not being struck that need to be taken into account. One belongs to the dominant-numbered group, and the other belongs to the outnumbered group. Strategically, in jogo do pau, the inferior force will seek to push away the group, to create holes and escape.

The superior force, though, will seek to surround and enclose the inferior force. In that sense, there are different general tactics specific to the type of set-ups trained.

Reconstructing the modes of combat a man might find himself in are known as jogos. In this way, a jogo refers to a specific geometric terrain, a particular number of opponents, or the specific behavior of one’s opponents. In sum, each game represents a strategic and tactical problem to either side of the group combat—both are training!

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Techniques & Training Methods In the martial arts community, one often comes across the idea that a style is the same as a paradigm. I only agree partially with this idea. Let me explain why, but first a question: After all, what is a style? A style is a specific and often personal approach to a particular weapon, context, and goals. A style is one person’s expression of the fundamental components of a root art. For example, the term fencing describes training using percussive and bladed weapons to prepare an individual for combat weapons. Thus, the core principles and guidelines of fencing must be present in the styles of fencing. In other words, the type, shape, and weight of a weapon shape every expression of fencing. In the same

vein, the ways weapons evolved through combat must also be taken into account. Since it is hard to agree on what fencing is and is not, a study and analysis of different styles worldwide is needed to reveal the essential concepts that define fencing. A review of this sort would begin by establishing a matrix of core principles and a clear understanding of the context, culture, and time in question. From this point, our findings would need to be tested and validated, just as by a scientist in a laboratory.

I claim there are universal fencing principles, but each weapon has a specific flavor. A so-called universal style is thus impossible to conceive. A stick is a stick; it just changes in dimension. It is what it is! From school to school, the stick remains the same object. What will change are just the ways one manipulates the stick offensively and defensively. There’s nothing wrong with a style unless it does not reflect the universal principles of fencing. To conclude this section, a style is about specifics and specialization inside a common root. Whether it is or is not called fencing, is not relevant.

Specifics and specialization in the fighting arts come with the training methods. Training methods are what make a coach different from another coach, a master different from another master. In my opinion, they are what make a style different. In jogo do pau, the specialty is the staff. In the Cepães school, we have our unique way of training it and other technical specificities that are different from other schools—we have our style.

Training Methods All our classes follow the same format every time. First, we start with the basics, which we call regras, or rules. Then we move to the group jogos, finishing with dueling—or contra-jogos. I estimate that 90% of the time, we focus on group jogos. The remainder of the class we devote to contra-jogos. Among the contra-jogos, there is a wide variety of sub-jogos meant to drill specific attributes, techniques, or combinations.

In the group jogos, we train one versus two and one or two versus three or more. Like the contra-jogos, these group jogos have many variations, and we train them as if we were in a different spatial environment, such as in a village square, a narrow street, a wide street, or up against a wall.

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To summarize, our jogo do pau structure is very simple and straight to the point. Classes stress group training—this is unique. We do not focus on developing the individual’s skill over the group. We are all part of a group, and we can fight as a group or as an individual. BUT we learn and train both in a group format. The syllabus is straightforward; there is not a name for every blow or parry. It

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works more on a simple language, a lot of observation, and practical application. We learn by doing the same thing again and again.

Another thing I must emphasize is the importance of basics. Present in every session and understood by all is the idea that the basics are key: the mechanics, the stepping, and the correct understanding of fighting principles.

I hope that by now, the differences between dueling and group combat are more apparent. I tried to demonstrate why one is entirely different from the other, by using general models and the unique lessons from the style of Cepães’s jogo do pau.

In the way we train the staff, the duel only happens when the group has failed its primary job—namely, to work as a group. The group is like a protective cloak for every member and a nightmare for an outnumbered force. There is no magic in this context. If the group is functional, the players know their role, strategy, and tactics; it also demands that they know the enemy’s behavior. In our methods, all players experience all the roles in the different games. I believe this method trains the brain to read the context faster, orient, decide, and act accordingly. Here I draw on Boyd’s OODA loop structure of the human reaction process. With this type of training structure, the mindset can react successfully against new or unexpected situations.

resort. Fighting with an advantage is the heart and soul of combat.

And a group is a significant advantage!

We can also read from this that every jogador knows how to handle and recognize impossible odds and the mercilessness in being ultimately left alone in the role of the batedor as a lone person dealing with a group assault. Because the picadores will not challenge you one by one and risk injury, they will work as a pack. They will face you as a group and force you to move so that you get tired and must give up, or so that you make a mistake that opens a window to take you out.

And from all this, maybe we can learn that no man will risk his own life if it is possible to drain his enemy of stamina and then capture or kill him with less effort. One needs to learn a lesson: fighting with an advantage is the heart and soul of combat!

See you around!

Out of all this, the reader can see that the true martiality in Cepães’s jogo do pau is that every jogador knows how to work in a group FIRST, and that the duel is the last

Pedro Silva @pedro.fma

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Post-Script:

STRIFE & FOLKLORE DISCOVERING THE RURAL FIGHTING ART OF JOGO DO PAU

Vincent Tamer

IT DIDN’T TRULY dawn on me that I was heading to Portugal until I had made it to the airport that day. For an American who has become deeply interested in the study of history and culture, it is an incredibly important pilgrimage to travel to Europe to rediscover one’s origins. When I imagine Europe, I imagine the millennia of history that have brought me to where I stand now. Portugal was the perfect destination for my homecoming to the Mediterranean, as I could celebrate not only the beauty of Iberia but also the fighting spirit of a traditional means of self-defense. Jogo do pau is a rural stick fighting practice that translates literally into “game

of the staff.’’ Within the municipality of Fafe, some thirty minutes outside of Porto, there was much to celebrate, as jogo do pau is experiencing a small renaissance.

Twelve schools coming from all corners of the small country arrived in Fafe to exchange, demonstrate, and plan for the future of the treasured fighting system that has come close to extinction on several occasions. This was the pivotal moment for The Immersion Foundation to make a hoplological expedition to Portugal to document the art of jogo do pau in stunning 4K resolution. I must say, it was an absolute privilege to film and learn the basics of such an old form of justice.

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The Justice of Fafe In the surrounding municipality of Fafe there is an age-old adage, “the Justice of Fafe,” which is often paired with an image or statue of a common man wielding a large stick or club, his hand gripping the jacket of another (presumably wealthy) man. If justice is not upheld in the town, the town will surely uphold justice! Historical records show mention of jogo do pau as early as the 1800s, but the form of self-defense is surely much older than that. Men would carry sticks of all sorts such as farming implements or a means to keep

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distance between themselves and the angered bulls they managed over, so in that culture a weapon to deal with a single rival or a gang from another town was always at hand. The melee style of swinging a large chin-high staff began to take root not only as a means of staying alive but as a form of bonding and enjoyment for townsfolk. While the “games” and duels that were played can be casual and lighthearted, although always accompanied by shouting and taunting, they were primarily for the purpose of teaching one how to de-

fend against a single attacker, and even more commonly, a group of attackers. It is even rumored that the fighting style was used by Lisbon guerrillas to fend off French troops in the Peninsular War in the 19th century. Jogo do pau is deeply woven into the folclórico, or folklore, of the Portuguese people.

Traditional rural clothing is often donned at local fairs as participants dance and sing the songs of the past, telling stories of quarrels or romances halted by an interloper and ultimately resulting in a duel with staves. While these seem as quaint nods to history, we later found out the harsh reality of rural life and how necessary it was for a man to possess the ability to wield the stick, as it was literally his lifeline. He could easily be killed in some dispute over land or over his lover without a means to defend himself. The Justice of Fafe solved many problems that were not to

be spoken of afterwards, problems that the government of that time wouldn’t care to deal with. Jogo do pau’s popularity slowly waned over the years as the stick became a less common tool amongst men who were dissuaded by church and state to give up the implement of the field. Why carry a stick when you are trying to leave the old days of strife behind? There was also supposedly no need to carry a weapon when the police were on guard. However, during the facist/corporatist regime beginning in 1926, there was a brief attempt to shape jogo do pau into an official sport fencing art of the country (Silva). The end of the “golden era” of the art was in the 1960s, ten years after stick fighting was banned in the public (Silva). There was a brief resurgence in the 1980s followed by a sharp decline, leaving us where we are now.

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This Is Jogo do Pau It was earlier in February when the Immersion Foundation’s CEO and Expedition Leader, Mahipal Lunia Sensei, and I met with Oscar Cunha and Pedro Silva, two jogadores or players whom we became fast friends with. Lunia Sensei made the acquaintance of Pedro through Dr. Michael J. Ryan, professor of anthropology, who served as resident scholar on The Immersion Foundation’s first hoplological expedition to Barbados in 2018. After having spent months in Portugal seeking out endemic martial arts to no avail, Dr. Ryan found Pedro online demonstrating jogo do pau with the rest of his school in rural Cepães, Portugal. “I saw the melee fighting and I knew this was the real stuff that I had heard about. Modern jogo do pau is most often seen in one-on-one duels rather than fights with multiple combatants. It was as if I were peering into a window to the past” (Ryan). Soon after, Dr. Ryan introduced Pedro to Lunia Sensei, and the plans were made to bring Pedro and Oscar—the son of his Mestre (master/teacher) Avelino Cunha— to The United States to represent jogo do pau at Stickmata, The Immersion Foundation’s second martial arts seminar that highlighted the myriad forms of stick fighting.

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Oscar and Pedro showed the wild fury of jogo do pau to a crowd of inveterate martial artists when they closed out the Stickmata seminar. The duo brought a fierce energy to the floor, energizing the attendees who were near exhaustion from the expansive three-day event. They ended their set with a rambunctious duel that resulted in various ash staves being shred to bits during the conclusive frenzy to their session. For most in attendance, this was an introduction to jogo do pau; many of them had not even heard of the art until that moment. Witnessing the raw spirit of this art had my mind blown with its sheer power. It was this skillful and bold presentation that brought Lunia Sensei to propose that The Immersion Foundation should travel to Portugal to document the art. The fact that highly skilled players of jogo do pau were a rarity pushed the issue further.

The Immersion Foundation was set to play a critical role in the revitalization of JDP. A large demonstration and conference was to be held near Porto later that year unifying the existing schools of the rural art. The role of The Immersion Foundation would be to not only document the differ-

ent schools of the art but to fully capture and create a video archive of the system of the Cepães school that Oscar and Pedro are part of.

The expedition would be in a similar spirit to TIF’s first expedition in Barbados, which was to document rare and often unheard-of African Diaspora arts. I personally felt a little bit of apprehension to commit to the adventure, as we would return from Portugal ten days before my wedding, but I simply couldn’t best my excitement to embark on my first adventure to Europe and to reprise my role as Director & Cinematographer of this exciting archival. For this second expedition, we outfitted ourselves with two excellent digital cinema cameras from Blackmagic Design, a serious upgrade for image quality over our previous setup. The choice was made for high-end video equipment, as the footage needed to stand the test of time. When working with disappearing cultures, quality is crucial and there are often no chances for a second take, so we had to make them count. I set up the redundant hard drives for data protection and organized the gear as best as I could for our small crew of two, knowing from our previous expedition that mobility is always a factor

for us! We drafted up a shooting schedule as best we could for the five-day trip, knowing as little as we did about the timing and locations. We would come to find out that the Portuguese operated on a much looser schedule than we had planned for.

In May of 2018, we arrived in Porto and were immediately brought to the residence of Oscar’s father, jogo do pau Mestre Avelino Cunha.

Oscar’s mother, Maria, prepared a traditional filling Portuguese meal as Oscar’s sister, Liliana, gave us a sunset tour of their vineyard. Mestre Avelino is retired but shows no sign of it. He works tirelessly in his vineyards or on his cultural projects within his village or in the greater municipality of Fafe.

Until midnight we took part in a major aspect of jogo do pau: eating, drinking, and talking together. Stories were told over glasses of vinho verde, fresh wine that has only fermented for a few months resulting in a low alcohol content and a fizzy texture. Oscar would often say throughout the night, “This is jogo do pau!” It is this communal art of eating that cements relationships after playing a few jogos, or games. By the end of the night, we were fully updat-

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ed on the lifestyle of the jogador and were already feeling fully immersed in JDP without even holding a staff. The night ended well after midnight; we had to prep the camera and gear and then quickly get some sleep to ward off the jet lag. The following day, we began our filming with the entire Cepães school at their local church, a place where they would come and practice for decades. The entire school donned the standard uniform of a jogador, clad in white dress shirts, dress shoes, and black pants. It was like a scene out of history with the ancient church serving as a backdrop to the training and players as young as about ten years old swinging a staff in the roda do meio, in which a lone jogador must fight his or her way out of the center of a circle of picadores, the pikemen thrusting with their staves. This was truly a sight to behold: shouting men swinging sticks with a historic bucolic church as a backdrop.

The entire scene was so visually rich that finding the right shot was natural as I followed the jogadores around. Seeing all of this spirited training was a reassurance of the future of JDP.

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The school ran through their routines as a national news program, Praça da Alegria, filmed them and interviewed Oscar, Pedro and the two Mestres Avelino and Carlos. Apparently the reporter became more interested in the story when they found out about the two “Americanos” who came out to film the rare art of jogo do pau, so much so that they interviewed Lunia Sensei on The Immersion Foundation’s mission to preserve and foster this age-old fighting style. When asked why he made the decision to travel to Portugal and archive the art, he replied, “It’s one of the last living [fighting] traditions in Europe. I think of it as a national treasure. Fighting and independence are very closely tied—when you lose fighting, you lose your independence, and then you lose your identity. So in many ways, when we look at these old arts, it is a way of maintaining that identity.”

Training with Mestre During our time in the areas of Fafe and Cepães, we witnessed the creation of the staves used in practice. These are often created from the trunk of a lódão tree (Celtis australis) and shaped into a strong yet extremely flexible weapon.

Maintained with olive oil after each training session, the sticks are often cut to chin height to create the perfect length for long-range stick fencing. Mestre Avelino had a garage full of these staves, some passed down to him by his father.

Descending from a line of JDP players, Mestre was the only child amongst his ten other siblings who took up the staff. He began training jogo do pau at the age of twelve and learned from many different teachers in the Fafe area as his own grandfather refused to teach him.

For some in the JDP culture, dueling or even practicing with one’s son or father is seen as a taboo, as one does not want to foster aggression within the family.

Amidst filming with the Cepães school, we had chances to practice the art ourselves with Oscar and Pedro, getting an in-depth review of the basic elements of JDP. Expedition Leader and inveterate martial artist Lunia Sensei even got an

opportunity in the busy schedule for one-on-one training with Mestre Avelino himself. Mestre inculcated the movements with the staff to Lunia Sensei in a free-flowing “conversation” with the weapon.

The training went largely unhampered by the language barrier between the two of them as Mestre taught the basics of the art from afternoon until the sun began to set. The instruction was given instinctually as Mestre swung at Lunia Sensei, calling for him to respond, as he taught blocks and hand placement on the staff. The experience for Lunia Sensei was wonderful and humbling; he was especially impressed with Mestre in how he was so passionate and skillful. He recalls a dinner session with Mestre Avelino: “Sitting in a restaurant soon becomes a lesson with this man. He has done jogo do pau for longer than I have been alive, and it truly shows” (Lunia).

The training took place on a small concrete lot attached to the same historic church. This was a place that many (if not all) of the jogadores in the area grew up receiving the same lesson from the same Mestre. This was truly an honor for us!

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The Iberian Connection More schools began to arrive from all corners of the country in the following two days before the big jogo do pau demo. As the various schools warmed up for a public evening demonstration, we filmed each set and caught a glimpse of the many shades of jogo do pau.

The different clans of JDP offered the full timeline of the fighting art’s evolution into modernity; from more traditional games being played, with jogadores dressed in the classic folclórico bucolic garb, to theatric stick fighting presentations in which JDP’s Celt-Iberian past was on display, to fully padded and protected sport sparring matches, all forms were seen. Two of the schools consisted entirely of teenagers, as JDP is making a comeback as an extracurricular activity in public schools. Somewhere in the middle of this spectrum falls the Cepães school led by Mestres Avelino Cunha and José Carlos Ferreira. The entire school dresses in a polished uniform of a white dress shirt and black slacks, bringing a gentlemanly element to what many would consider a wild art form. The fierce nature of jogo do pau is alive and well with the Cepães school, whose hard hits are unguarded by any form of padding and whose battle shouts and

loud provocations can be heard all throughout the church yard that they practice in. They possess the bravery to train unarmored, yet swing their hard wooden staves as hard or harder than the sport players. Their rowdy playing catches the attention of all, like a gateway into a historic brawl.

Amongst the twelve schools in attendance there was a foreign element, an extension of the Cepães school consisting of eleven men from, of all places, Sweden. It was the similarity between JDP and the Iberian longsword, the montante, that drew the first members to Portugal to learn from the Cepães school. The use of the montante has become popular in the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) community and has seen a surge in the growth of practitioners.

Even during our first dinner, Mestre Avelino produced from his shed a montante that was gifted to him by his Swedish students. He roared at us as we ate our dinner, thrusting the huge weapon at us in a demonstration of how similar the wide sweeping movements are to that of the staff (hampered of course by us being in a small dining room). Several of the Swedish members shared their thoughts on

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how learning JDP brought life to their montante practice, which was studied from various old texts and in many ways lacked context. The group games of JDP translate nearly seamlessly to the scenarios of the montante; both weapons were utilized mainly for crowd control or to handle large groups of attackers.

What are known as “games/jogos” with the staff are just scenarios in which the one jogador must defend himself against groups as large as ten. In some cases he is completely surrounded (roda do meio), in some cases he has two men flanking him (um a bater dois) and there are games designed for confrontations in the tight alleyways of the town (jogo de quelhas), along with one-on-one dueling (contra-jogo).

Within the realm of the montante, the scenarios are called “plays” and often feature the same tactics of sweeping movements of the blade, covering one’s front and back with one swing as a form of crowd control.

A New Chapter At sunset the twelve schools assembled and began their parade to an amphitheater in the town square of Fafe. Navigating the city streets, which were already riled up due to a victory in a state soccer match, the marching jogadores caught the

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attention of the town, garnering a deep sense of pride for this tradition. The parade made a stop at the city hall where the mayor presented the head of each school with an award, commemoration for their upkeep of tradition. Lunia Sensei also received an award for his dedication to the preservation of the art. It was truly a proud moment for Portugal as a near-extinct cultural practice was being recognized by the local government.

Soon after, the schools demonstrated jogo do pau for the audience of fair-goers at the amphitheater, some of whom had not even seen JDP before. All shades of the game were witnessed: the two schools consisting of teenagers demonstrated the art as a means of attaining athleticism, several schools brought theatrical elements to their games, and many schools wore traditional men’s garb harking back to the 1800s; there was the modern rendition, where the participants wore protective gear and bashed each other with padded staves, and there were styles focused on one-on-one dueling where we even witnessed hidden spear-point blades in the staves. While all displays of JDP were celebrated, it was the Cepães school and its Swedish offshoot that demonstrated the fiercest JDP,

breathing life into the art with each taunting shout at whoever was in the middle of the circle. I was operating with the camera over my shoulder for an exhaustive three hours in order to capture all of the action—something I felt the next day. However, it was worth it to remain true to the energetic style of JPD with energetic camera work.

In a shining moment during the set of the Cepães schools demo, Oscar stepped into the roda and blew the circle of attackers wide open with a fearsome display of staff work as the crowd of onlookers cheered. It

became clear why his father Mestre Avelino referred to him as “a terror!” The bar has been set high for JDP due to his efforts and that of the Cepães school.

Over the course of five days, jogo do pau had truly sunken its way into our hearts as we immersed ourselves in the culture, food, and fighting style of rural Portugal. A highlight for me was to get a better feel for wielding the staff, building upon some previous experience from Oscar and Pedro’s visit back in February. During that time we

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were introduced to all the group games, and I was able to learn the movements of the roda do meio.

While I was filming in Portugal I was taking careful note of the movements to refresh myself, and I gratefully accepted any short lesson I could partake in during breaks in recording when spontaneous bouts would strike up amongst the schools. The temptation to continue to film or train was a constant struggle, with filming winning almost every time. A personal takeaway for Lunia Sensei was witnessing the humble and highly skilled Cepães school of jogo do pau. “They treated everything with great care and respect. These are hallmarks of mastery and a rich tradition.” He noted similarities between jogo do pau and Indian silambam, an art that may have even cross-pollinated with JDP as the Indian state of Goa was once part of the Portuguese empire (Lunia).

For Pedro, the expedition was an emotional experience. “It was the first time getting foreigners interested in our culture (outside of the Swedish players)—it isn’t a mainstream thing. We’re a little group. Everyone was surprised.” In particular, a moment that moved him was witnessing The Immersion Foundation filming and interviewing the various jogo do pau

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schools as they practiced at the local church before the public exhibition. That place is truly hallowed ground for him as well as many other jogadores. In his reflections, Oscar explains how this expedition was a leap for jogo do pau and that, through the transmission of the footage, “the art will reach places that we never thought of.”

He concludes that, while he feels the traditional style of jogo do pau will never be a popular art, at least the theatric and sport aspects may also boost in popularity as a result of this work, which will ultimately lead some practitioners to the traditional ways. Growth within the ranks of the Cepães school is slow but steady, and the number increases every month. For Oscar and the other jogadores of Cepães, their ways cannot be sacrificed in order to gain popularity; “We want to keep the art exactly as it was by the teachers and by their teachers. It must pass down whole and we must assure it stays that way” (Cunha).

Our stay in Portugal was short and our days long but I knew I had to take part in at least one roda for my time there to feel complete. On our last day, Mestre Avelino led a training session with the various schools. Towards the end of the session, he began to lead the Swed-

ish school through the roda, and he encouraged me to put the cameras down and join. I moved both of the cameras to the side and out of harm’s way and let them roll as I stepped into the circle. The game was completely exhilarating and a major cardio gauntlet as I fought my way out, a truly unforgettable experience that left me craving more training. Needless to say, this won’t be my last roda! When touching down in London on our way home, both my Sensei and I took note of the difference we felt outside of the un-hurried municipality of Fafe. We could still both feel the insignificance of time from the country life, which was in stark contrast with the rushing British travelers. We both agreed that the effect jogo do pau had on us was something to be cherished, as we had managed to travel through time with the simple yet furious game of the staff.

A Mission in Pioneering & Preservation Many don’t realize the value of something until it is gone, or until someone else shows interest in it. When asked if the expedition helped jogo do pau’s image in the public eye, Pedro explains that, “the fact that foreigners were there filming and exploring [the art]

made jogo do pau more important and revitalized our understanding that the art is a treasure. It is something that we need to keep, something we need to fuel and make people more motivated to get involved with. Someone cares; this is not forgotten.” Since the expedition, various new endeavors have been underway for the Cepães school: lodão tree planting in cooperation with the mayor of Fafe and a local elementary school, a presentation at the elementary school in which Mestres Avelino and Carlos taught the children about jogo do pau, as well as another collaboration and exhibition event, an encontro, on the horizon. “For jogo do pau to prosper, the Portuguese people and government have to understand that this art is unique in the world, that it is amazing,” Oscar explains. “The different schools must be united. We have to create a structure, programs and projects to get the young engaged in our tradition.” While the widespread acceptance of JDP may seem too lofty of a goal, we can see these very programs Oscar mentioned taking shape in the afterglow of the expedition. Pedro notes on the proliferation of JDP that, “there are no nationalistic ideals, at least for us in our group. We agree to show and share JDP as long as it is

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not prostituted out. They must use it well and defend it well. We don’t care what nation you are from, we just want passionate players. We don’t advertise, no marketing. We screen people, we teach everyone but not everyone.”

While the main objective of a hoplological expedition is the documentation of a fighting system and culture, a happy side effect tends to be the resurgence of the art and culture itself. Bringing American foreigners in and then giving these local martial artists the spotlight will always ignite the hearts of the youth, who have found a new interest in an old way of life. “The kids pick up the tradition and philosophy and carry it forward into the future. This is a national resource,” notes Dr. Ryan. It is not only that the culture benefits from having a means of self-defense and a vibrant pastime, but it goes much deeper than that. A much overlooked benefit to these fighting arts is the heroic spirit that they cultivate without needing to risk life and limb. Dr. Ryan refers to the significance of the stick as “a material expression of a social safety brake against unrestrained violence. They [the fighting parties] can be bloodied but left alive.

The village feuds might not break out because of that, young men

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can transition from boy to man [experience essential violence] and not kill the other guy. The non-lethality of the stick is key.” I would argue that, at least in Westernized countries, specific practices with these invigorating qualities are soon to be a thing of the past if not rediscovered and rekindled. As Dr. Ryan puts it, “young men needed to do dangerous things to prepare themselves for the vagaries of life, to stand strong and fight with their brothers against threats.”

The jogo do pau expedition will be opened up to the public eye with a “docu-instructional” (documentary & martial art instructional) film detailing the first comparison of the various operating schools of jogo do pau. The film will allow viewers to connect with the Portuguese tradition and give them a taste of the art with instructional segments taught by jogadores Oscar Cunha and Pedro Silva as well as Mestre Avelino Cunha. A portion of the proceeds will go towards the jogo do pau artists and the rest of the proceeds will fund future hoplological expeditions. The Immersion Foundation also plans to host Mestre Avelino, Oscar, and Pedro for a future USA seminar.

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THE IMMERSION FOUNDATION

The Immersion Foundation was founded in 2017 with a mission to pioneer martial arts education and cultural preservation. What started as an act to hold a small seminar blossomed into a collaboration of epic proportions. Mahipal Lunia Sensei and his small aiki jujutsu dojo (of which I am a part) in Mountain View, California, launched a series of global events, referred to as “Labs,” hosting martial art masters from around the world. Beginning with a three-day exploration of edged combat arts, Legacy of the Blade was TIF’s maiden voyage into game-changing martial art events, bringing some of the most dedicated and skilled martial artists together to teach and explore under one roof. Following soon after Legacy of the Blade was Stickmata, an examination of stick fighting arts from locales such as Barbados, Italy, Japan, and of course, Portugal.

However, these ILF Beacon events aren’t the only endeavors made by The Immersion Foundation; ILF Laser Focus events are smaller and more frequent mini-labs that ex-

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plore a single art in detail, offering a contrast to the big labs that are held annually. The Immersion Foundation also carries forth the torch of hoplology, the study of human combat behavior and performance, a field that was dormant for nearly thirty years. Traveling off the beaten path to locales such as Portugal, the Philippines, and Barbados, The Immersion Foundation has been striving to document and archive at-risk and unknown martial arts on ILF Spotlight Expeditions in order to spread awareness and preserve martial systems for academic study. Armed with high-end 4K cameras, The Immersion Foundation has now archived twelve distinct martial art systems from several countries such as Trinidadian kalinda, Italian Cielo e Meraviglia knife fencing, Filipino tapado, and Māori rongomamau, to name a few. These archived arts can be held for future generations of martial artists far and wide, ensuring that these systems remain alive and thriving!

WORKS CITED

Cunha, Oscar. Personal Interview. 2 June 2020.

Lunia, Mahipal. Personal Interview. 15 May 2020.

Ryan, Michael J. Personal Interview. 21 May 2020 Silva, Pedro. Personal Interview. 2 June 2020.

Vincent Tamer @vincent.tamer

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Various Expressions of JDP

STICKS BRANCHING OUT Toby Cowern

MANY ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE will rightly address sticks in the martial arts and self-defense context. I want to widen the scope a little and consider sticks, staves, and similar on a broader front, which I would classify more in the realm of personal safety.

I’m approaching this not only from the martial perspective but also, and extensively, from the survival instructor’s viewpoint, which I work in extensively.

In the historical record, and even in some modern-day areas, we can see sticks carried and used extensively in hunter-gatherer and herding societies. It is quite fascinating to look at the logic behind

this not only for an understanding of legacy but also to see what is still valuable and applicable in today’s living.

I’ll highlight four of the many predominant reasons why people still carry sticks. Typically, we need to think more about staff than stick as most carried are on average approaching 2 meters (6 ft) in length or more and typically 2½ cm (1 in) or more in thickness. Our four reasons are: 1. Stability 2. Investigative / Assistive tool 3. Direction indication 4. Protection

1

Stability

They are visible in the modern landscape. Canes, crutches, and variants thereof abound to assist people with varying mobility problems. The more undulating the terrain, the more use a staff becomes to everyone, whether it be in general ascending or descending of terrain, all the way through to specialized techniques in higher-risk features, such as crossing rivers, illustrated here:

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The specific environment will largely influence what size the staff is to be and its use. Of note and interest, here in the Far Northern climes, staves are used year-round, but far more heavily in the winter.

As a ski pole, historically, the Sami used just one long pole, as opposed to the more generally accepted use of two shorter ski poles.

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Investigative / Assistive Tool

2

Peeking under rocks, reaching into holes, and separating dense foliage all present potential hazards in many regions due to the animal threat. Snakes, scorpions, and smaller or larger animals possibly mean that reaching and treading where you can’t see is not a good idea.

Depth-checking water or snow levels as a vital part of reading the terrain is also greatly assisted with a good staff. Even to reach those places out of arm’s length, knocking fruit from a tree, or pushing a piece of rope onto a branch to secure shelter or similar is all com-

pleted more efficiently and safely—these are two hugely important factors for constant consideration in all environments—with staff in hand.

Finally, our staff often purchases a significant mechanical advantage for various manual tasks when used as a lever, brace, or anchor.

As a stake, it can offer a supportive and stable platform, still in use today for widely varying tasks, and often seen in the employment of optics (rifles, telescopes, etc.).

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Direction Indication

3

From the humble, but practical sun compass:

To the elongation of more than just the finger—meaning the staff, in general, can be used to more accurately point out a specific direction or place to look in, minimizing the danger of misunderstanding:

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To the extremes of precise utilization for specialist tasks, as in the case of a tracking stick:

Our staff offers a vital and widely varying means of expression and communication, both historically and now.

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Protection

4

Here, we segway back to the bulk of discussion and employment of sticks in this issue.

If we drift away from pure self-defense, though, where we are typically thinking of a human threat, we can see in terms of buying distance from an alternative (such as animal) threat, where a staff is a huge bonus.

There is a litany of accounts of fur trappers dispatching kills in the traps using sticks (bludgeoning) or sharpened or modified sticks as spears to penetrate vital organs or pin an animal in place to be dispatched by other means. We can even take a brief glimpse of the incredible development of the bow released from the form of a stick and the substantial progressive step that meant for our hunter ancestors . . .

Historically, many indigenous rites of passage revolved around killing a particular animal (usually an apex predator) in a certain way (typically with staff or spear). Here in the North of Scandinavia, even up to the turn of the 19th century, (brown) bears were hunted and

killed with sharpened staves. No mean feat when considering all factors!

So, our humble stick usage always has, and ever will be, only limited by our imagination. Still, a glance into our past often offers some incredible examples to look into and spend some time learning.

Toby Cowern @tread.lightly.14

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THE ART OF JO JUTSU Henri-Robert Vilaire

History KAZE ARASHI RYU IS an integrated martial arts system consisting of weapons and empty-hand arts. The system works as a single art, although subdivided into sections for ease of learning.

They are: aiki jujutsu, the art of receiving and redirecting an opponent’s energy through throws, joint manipulation, and other principles of body mechanics and movement; atemi jutsu, the art of striking to vital targets and pressure points with the hands, arms, feet, and other body parts; ken jutsu, the art of fighting with blades, including all lengths of swords and knives; and jo jutsu, the art of fighting with staves, or sticks, of all lengths, bladed or non-bladed. At higher levels, the system sets different weapons against each other. In addition to the four pillars of the system, here are supportive arts: tessen jutsu, the art of fighting and communicating with a metal fan, and obi tai waza, the art of restraining and controlling an attacker utilizing a strap and/or a rope—which are fundamental to the system.

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Principles Numerous martial arts organize themselves on a number or series of techniques per grade: 5 for a white belt, 10 for a yellow belt, 15 for a green belt, etc. In contrast, kaze arashi ryu revolves around four fundamental principles that weave through every part of the system. The techniques then become a variation or demonstration of how the principles are applied.

Critically, one should remember that all four principles are applied to every technique regardless of whether one is performing aiki jujutsu, ken jutsu, or jo jutsu.

The first principle is ryu ha, which deals with strategic planning from both an individual and group perspective, which is the fundamental principle of the system. For example, when facing multiple attackers, ryu ha suggests the optimal strategy to adopt: Where, when,

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and how do you attack? These are only a few of the questions to consider when facing such a situation.

The goal of ryu ha is to help you paint a picture of the landscape, so to speak, so you can very quickly understand the best strategy at the time.

As the confrontation progresses, the second principle, toate no jutsu, or the art of physically and mentally affecting an opponent to put him in a state of unbalance, becomes extremely important. Toate no jutsu includes connecting or communicating intent and positions that weaken the opponent’s body before subduing. How you position a person’s body before applying a technique is the difference between whether you resort to brute force or grace to affect the subjugation of the opponent.

The third principle, tai ichi, refers to the idea of body-as-one or the art of starting from and moving through your center. This principle teaches one to remain in balance, able to move freely in any direction, armed or unarmed. In kaze arashi ryu, we always assume there are multiple attackers. So our movements reflect eliminating one attacker while preparing to attack or defend against the next. Proper balance and position are critical to success. Taisabaki, or body movement and positioning, enables you to move from one circle to another without interrupting the flow of energy.

The fourth principle is in-yo. Commonly referred to as yin/yang, this principle involves the use of opposing forces that, when combined, maximize the effectiveness of the technique. Often in our techniques, we are pulling the body in one direction while attacking in the other. Or we are hyperextending a joint while exerting force in the opposite direction, maximizing the effect. An example of this principle in other arts is the pullwhen-pushed approach to defending oneself.

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Jo Jutsu The art of the jo within our system derives from a monastic tradition of using staves or sticks, yari (spear) and naginata (halberd) to protect oneself. Jo jutsu is the name given to the curriculum of principles and techniques that involve various lengths of staves and staff-like weapons. Along with ken jutsu (the art of bladed weapons) atemi jutsu (the art of striking vital points), and aiki jujutsu (the supple art of harmonizing inner strength), jo jutsu forms one of the four pillars of this comprehensive system.

The three main sizes of jo used in kaze arashi ryu are: the dai jo, or a stick five to six feet long and referred to as a bo; the chu jo, or a stick around four feet long; and the sho jo, a stick about 24 inches long. The exact length of each staff will depend on the size of each exponent of the art. The sho jo being short and very manageable, is also used in pairs and is incredibly useful in the hands of a trained practitioner. Also included in the jo jutsu curriculum are jo-like weapons such as the yari/spear and naginata/halberd, allowing jo jutsuka (students of the art of the staff) to familiarize themselves with sticks of any length, with or without a blade attached.

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Manipulating the jo is not merely a matter of swinging a stick. With each strike or parry, the entire body adapts to allow for the most effective use of the jo. All changes of body positioning—or taisabaki— emanate from the hips. The hips act as the center controlling the

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entire body. An essential aspect of the parry or block called boubisuru is that the attacker’s weapon is driven into their body to start the process of toate no jutsu—weakening the opponents’ body to increase the efficacy of the technique.

The system is composed of a unique set of blocks (boubisuru), strikes (atemi), body movements (taisabaki), throwing techniques (nage waza), chokes (shime waza), sweeps (otoshi), and locking of the arms and legs (garame). Beginning students learn to parry and strike with the jo. Each new taisabaki form builds on the one previously learned until students are practicing forms that combine parries, strikes, guard positions, and double and reverse strikes. A student learns each form with the three lengths of jo with minor variations. As a result of the extensive and intensive amount of training required, mastery of the art calls for a deep investment in time and energy.

Suppose one considers the jo to be an extension of the arm. In that case, one eventually realizes many empty-hand techniques are transposable to the jo. A person holding a stick in their hands does not mean that any technique must be limited to those learned with the jo. The stick is an additional element useful to overcome an attacker in any defense situation, but not the only factor. In kaze arashi ryu, techniques from atemi jutsu and aiki jujutsu are combined with methods of the jo to enable the defender to be as effective as possible

in their defense. After parrying an attack, it may be more practical to strike the aggressor with an elbow, knee, or other body parts before completing the technique with the stick. If attacked at close range, a punch or kick may be the most appropriate defensive response before immobilizing the opponent with either a stranglehold, a joint lock, or even a combination of both. Bearing in mind that the jo is an extension of the arm, the practitioner will develop highly effective combinations should the need arise.

While manipulating the jo, it is essential to remember that it is in constant tension, or in-yo. Typically, the top hand is pushing the jo down while the lower hand is offering resistance upwards. When held horizontally, in-yo is emphasized as a torsional or twisting of the staff in opposite directions. In this way, the staff is firmly held, providing maximum impact for atemi. Alternately, it acts to maintain a firm grip on the staff, opposing any attempt to disarm the operator. In contrast, the sho jo, held in either the left or right hand and the middle, allows both ends to attack or defend.

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Taisabaki Use of Strikes Utilizing the Jo Taisabaki is the principle of moving through the ten angles of attack and defense. It is a method of moving the body to neutralize any angle of attack, leaving the attacker open for the most effective counterattack. These angles of attack and defense are the same, no matter whether you have a sword, staff, or nothing in your hand. For example, when you see the kiba dachi, or horse stance, these are utilized against straight thrusts to the middle of the body. If you are attacking with your fist, it’s a straight punch that is like karate; if you had a staff in your hand, it’s a straight thrust with the staff; if you had a sword in your hand, it’s a straight thrust with the sword. If you were talking about an attack where one uses the defensive steps of tenkan dachi—overhead attacks with a fist, sword, beer bottle or whatever—it’s still that same angle of attack. Once you know what the angles of attack are, you can pick up any weapon and, with little training, attain a degree of proficiency.

For taisabaki irimi dachi, the ball of the foot moves through the center and out at a 45-degree forward angle, and it is suitable against

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a straight or hook punch aimed at the head. Taisabaki kiba dachi starts again with the outside foot scribing a half-circle as it moves forward and out at a 90-degree angle and is most effective against an attack aimed at the torso. Taisabaki tenkan dachi starts by taking a small step forward then tenkan-ing—turning the body approximately 180 degrees to avoid an overhead or uppercut attack.

Taisabaki tani dachi is especially useful against low attacks, and it’s where you step back, moving through your center on a 45-degree angle. Taisabaki koran dachiare is best described as postures and forms a T-stance. If you trace the path that the feet make, for all ten taisabaki, you will inevitably scribe a circle.

Critical aspects of taisabaki are ma-ai, or the distance between attacker and defender, and koran, or cat-stepping. The length of the weapon and the type of attack used determine which taisabaki step or steps to perform. Koran is mainly used to move in rapidly on an attacker at a distance or to move away quickly to create a greater range. In cat-stepping, you take an extended step and let the other foot follow. Koran looks like a close-tothe-ground springing action; it is not a hop and comes into use when

the length of the attacker’s weapon is longer than your own. Ma-ai is about being aware of the length of the attacker’s weapon and the distance between you, so you can move to an advantageous position.

A unique feature of the taisabaki is that, as you step, the ball of the foot comes down first, followed by the heel. Developed at a time when armed conflicts were frequent and men fought on all types of terrain, one had to be very careful where to step to avoid losing their balance and potentially their life.

Boubisuru Utilizing the Jo For taisabaki irimi dachi, the preparatory phase involves raising one end of the jo while supporting the lower end from underneath and stepping in at a 45-degree forward angle. Thus, the force of the attack is not met head-on but parried upward. The block concludes by tenkaning the rear leg and reversing the positions of your hand. In this way, the opponent’s jo swings to the inside, and you are on the outside of their attack. From this advantageous position, you can conclude with more atemi, locking, or throwing techniques. The aim of taisabaki kiba dachi is to deflect a front-thrusting attack.

Stepping to the side, raise the outside hand overhead while support-

ing the lower part of the staff from underneath. To gain a more advantageous position, raise the inside hand while the outside hand drops, and you step forward towards the opponent. This motion throws their jo back, unbalancing them, and allows you the upper hand. Taisabaki tenkan dachi are deflections that emanate as a result of an overhead attack. Simultaneously you raise your forward hand to meet the attacking jo and make a tenkaning motion away.

Once you complete this motion, you complete the block by keeping contact with the opponent’s jo as you pin it to the ground or into their body. Again, you are outside of their area of strength and can easily counter. To effectively use taisabaki tani dachi, the staff in the rear hand reaches out. It then performs a rowing type of motion, reaching over the top of the attacker’s weapon and directing it back across your front. A critical aspect of this technique involves rocking the forward knee back out of the line of attack so one can quickly gain the offensive by rocking forward to within striking distance. For taisabaki koran dachi, the backhand is up, and the front hand underneath supports the jo.

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Atemi (Strikes) Utilizing the Jo Striking is a critical component of the kaze arashi ryu system. If done correctly, it can mean the end of a confrontation or, at the very least, allow the practitioner the opportunity to apply the appropriate control or throw to end the encounter. Strikes break down into two categories: tenshin (attacking strikes) and sen sen no sen (counterattacks). Before any tenshin strike, a practitioner will try and open up an opponent not just by knocking the attacker’s weapon out of the way of an opponent but by disrupting their balance and weakening the opponent before launching an attack. Using the forward end of the jo, the practitioner directs the attacker’s weapon away from their center and back to the opposite shoulder. Once deflected, the jo returns quickly, generating a powerful whipping momentum as the other hand moves forcefully outwards to ensure the strike is more effective.

The counterattacks follow the same taisabaki motion, as men-

tioned in the blocks. A great deal more torsional twist is exhibited in the strikes resulting in a whipping motion. The first strike, or taisabaki irimi dachi, are oblique cuts made at a 45-degree angle and are intended to strike the side of the neck or clavicle. Taisabaki three and four can take on two distinct forms depending upon whether you are attacking or counterattacking. The attacking taisabaki involves stepping in and delivering a stomach thrust. The counter strike to this is stepping off to the side, bringing the jo up over their head, and circling it around to strike the center of the attacker’s back. In both instances, the point of the jo is the principal point of attack. Taisabaki tenkan dachi are straight overhead attacks and an upward thrust on a counterattack. With every strike, the opposite end of the staff is tucked up underneath the arm and not the armpit. This motion allows for an additional distance and freedom of movement when transferred to

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other techniques because the elbow is not locked out. Taisabaki tani dachi are strikes aimed at the knee region. They come into play when you are moving forward to strike the opponent’s front leg. The tenshin or counterattack is identical except that the leg is stepping back on a 45-degree angle. Taisabaki nine and ten are a combination of the two strikes: the stomach thrust and the overhead. These can be performed either in pairs or alternated and is the same for the counterattack.

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Nage Waza (Throws) Utilizing the Jo All the nages begin by aligning the jo across the uke’s—or attacker’s—upper chest close to the neck following the line of the jaw. The use of toate no jutsu and tai ichi are the two fundamental principles involved in off-balancing the attacker. Once the jo is in place, the tip of the jo pushes down while the bottom end moves up. Hence this reversal of position represents a subtle form of in-yo.

As this transformation is developing, the center is moving back towards the attacker’s triangulation point. The end of the jo remains in contact with the person as they fall

to the ground. You must stay close to the opponent so that the throw precedes the finishing lock or strike.

What may not be evident when viewing any of the techniques is that the initial placement of the staff on the attacker is a strike that flows into the lock or throw.

Shime Waza (Chokes) Utilizing the Jo The jo is especially effective when applying chokes because of the incredible advantage gained with a lever. The greater the distance be-

tween your hands, the greater the amount of leverage available—up to a point, of course. The jo also provides solid support to either press with or against depending upon the choking area. In general, three major areas are susceptible to choking. The first and most apparent is against the front of the neck or larynx, preventing oxygen from entering the body and carbon dioxide from being expelled. With enough pressure, the larynx can be compressed or collapsed, causing

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death. The other two points are on either side of the neck involving the carotid arteries. The attacker will lose consciousness due to restricted flow of blood, and consequently, oxygen, to the brain. An effective choke works by applying pressure with the joint and your forearm in opposite directions, or in-yo. You can also take advantage of several pressure points. For instance, placing the staff against the back of the neck, just on the side of the spinal column, and your forearm against the larynx can result in the simultaneous attacking of a pressure point and rendering of the opponent unconscious.

Otoshi (Dropping an Opponent) Utilizing the Jo Otoshi is a series of movements involving several movements such as sweeping the leg, locking, and throwing. Using leverage like that used in shime waza, attacking pressure points in the leg can be very useful in locking and directing or throwing the opponent. For instance, in taisabaki one and two, the staff is placed between the attacker’s legs across the pressure point and then twisted as you push them. As a result, prevented from maintaining any sense of balance, the opponent is compelled to fall forward or becomes susceptible to being pulled backward.

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Defense against knife attacks is more effectively handled with locks, whereas parries, thrusts, and strikes work best against another staff. It is worth mentioning that otoshi techniques remain relatively unchanged for each size of jo, whereas this is not the case with ude garami. Because of the number of similarities between otoshi and ude garami, learning one system becomes easier once one has mastered the other.

Ude Garami (Arm Locks) Utilizing the Jo Ude garami is undoubtedly the most complicated section of the system. The reason for this is that locks differ considerably between the different sizes of staff. Due to different staff sizes, a successful lock requires more attention paid to body positioning and accuracy in staff placement. Primarily in ude garami, the staff is used to lock the opponent’s arm in a position either in front or to their rear. Pressure points are used to a greater extent, primarily when the sho jo is employed. All this motion, combined with the pressure point, leads to very effective techniques.

With the dai and chu jo, all eight taisabaki positions call for the arm wrapping around the jo with the wrist touching the small of the

opponent’s back. Each technique starts from a slightly different angle, but through proper body motion, all finish up at the same place. When using the sho jo, each technique begins with a quick lock against the opponent’s wrist. In either case, you secure their arm and lead them to the ground.

Jo jutsu is not an easy art to learn, nor is it mastered in a short time. Mastery of a weapon comes through mastering one’s own body, mind, and spirit, a goal which many aspire to but few attain. Because of the intrinsic qualities of the jo, however, proficiency in self-defense can be gained in a relatively short period by those with the necessary drive and determination to devote themselves assiduously to the study of one of Japan’s most traditional and respected arts.

Kaze arashi ryu is not a beautiful-looking art to practice; it is a brutal art meant to cause severe pain or death. Its function as a fighting art is to be combat-effective. Everything we do, even while learning the principles, is with combat efficiency in mind. Nevertheless, it does require a certain amount of grace and poise to practice. Ken jutsu develops power; jo jutsu promotes coordination; and tessen jutsu builds grace and fluidity. The blend of combat effectiveness and elegance combined with a fundamental principle base makes kaze arashi ryu a unique art to practice.

Henri-Robert Vilaire Henri-Robert Vilaire

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THE STAFF IN

PENTJAK SILAT SERA Stevan Plinck THROUGHOUT HUMANKIND’S existence, before the invention of writing, all human cultures have utilized some version of the staff.

Staves are—along with rocks—our first tools, the earliest weapons past bare hands and feet. And they are just as effective today as they were ten thousand years ago.

Being whacked on the head with a heavy stick will do as much damage to a skull now as it did when

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people were running around in fig leaves or bearskins. Techniques have evolved, but people’s bodies mostly have not.

Staves can help you walk, pry up a log to reveal food, and skillfully used, lay low an animal or human attacking you. With a long stick, you can help carry things looped over the ends to stir a fire or to pull somebody out of quicksand.

Put a point on a staff; it becomes a spear, the queen of close-quarters weapons, and with sufficient skill and numbers, a hunting tool capable of taking down a mastodon or a lion.

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Many martial arts consider a staff to be the most versatile of handheld non-projectile weapons. Many cultures still have people walking with staves, and all of them use a shorter version—the cane. There are few places on Earth where somebody with a gimpy leg cannot carry a stout cane, and it doesn’t need a sword hidden inside to be a dangerous weapon.

As with most societies using such tools, the Indonesians developed myriad ways of employing the staff. The village arts of Indonesia are many; there are hundreds of variations, and so the ways of

One doesn’t fight the weapon; one fights the opponent wielding it.

employing hand-held weapons will also be different, depending on the art. There are, however, only so many efficient ways to use a tool. Eventually, anybody seeking those ways is going to come up with something that looks like something someone else discovered. At some point, Little John’s staff from the band of Robin Hood of Nottingham Forest is going to look something like one swung in Japan, China, or Indonesia.

There are a lot of ways to use a fist, but doing it without breaking one’s hand narrows down the effective methods. “Boxer’s fracture” is a term that is used by doctors frequently for a reason. That metacarpal under the little finger doesn’t like smacking into a hard body part, and the expression, “Big bone beats little bone,” is as true today as it has always been. Breaking one’s hand is not generally considered the most effective way to defeat an opponent.

Our fighting system, pukulan pentjak silat sera plinck (usually short-

ened to silat sera), developed in western Java, is a synthesis of several other arts, including Indonesian, Chinese, and even elements of brawling brought to Jakarta by European sailors. While it is primarily a blade system, featuring knives and swords of various sizes and shapes, it does employ staves and spears, as well as empty hands, with blends of striking and grappling techniques used in conjunction with force-multiplying weapons.

The art is named in honor of its founder, a mysterious fellow called Sera, supposedly for his hoarse voice. However, it could have been for his tricky manner, owl-like wisdom, or maybe that he had a particular shade of red hair, all of which the term can mean, depending on dialect, accent, and spelling.

Bapak Sera, according to our oral history, had a clubfoot and a deformed arm. He distilled an effective style to compensate for his disabilities from several fighting styles he studied over the years.

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One of Sera’s senior students, Mas Djut, helped his teacher formalize the art for those who had healthy limbs. And as did many martial artists, when they saw a useful technique done by somebody else, they promptly swiped it and incorporated it.

Sera, sometimes written as serak, was brought to the U.S. in the early 1960s by a Javanese immigrant family, principally under the guidance of Paul de Thouars, one of four brothers who practiced martial arts in Java, Holland, and the United States.

Initially a closed-door art restricted to Indonesians or Dutch-Indo-

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nesians, sera today has continued to evolve under de Thouars’ senior students. The silat of Bapak Sera and Mas Djut consists of interlinked laws and principles. It’s less about power and speed, and more about timing and position.

Any weapon used—biological, or an extension of the human body— must follow the laws and principles of the system, and by so doing, achieves a continuity and coherence that makes it more effective.

The staff—sometimes called toya, tisng, or kayu—can be of rattan, bamboo, wood, iron, or steel. One of the practice versions we use is made from a 1.5-inch-diame-

ter high-impact PVC pipe with capped ends and is sturdy enough for moderate contact, inexpensive, and easy to find. Indonesian staves typically range from as short as three or four feet to five or six feet long, an inch-and-a-half to two inches in diameter.

One of the most significant advantages of a staff is reach. An adept with a staff can keep an attacker with a knife or even a sword outside his cutting or stabbing range.

It is beyond the scope of this article to teach specific techniques, but we can address some general rules that apply not only to the staff but to all the weapons we use.

Size does matter. I would rather have a five-foot-long hardwood staff in hand against a knife or sword than be waving an eighteen-inch stick or my bare hands.

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For example: covering the highline, low-line, and the center-line.

On the face of it, this would seem self-evident; a knife to the inner thigh can nick a major artery and kill as quickly as a stab to the heart, so failing to cover either one is risky. A stab to the shoulder or the front of a thigh will find fewer serious targets than the organs and vessels in the torso. Police learn to shoot to center-of-mass for a reason—the spine, heart, lungs, liver, spleen, and the bowels are there.

With a staff, it is possible to cover more of one’s body without moving the weapon. If you are holding the staff with one end on the floor and the other straight up, and you are behind it, you are covering high, low, and center. When an attack comes, you can deflect, block, parry, or counter high or low.

At times, one cannot cover everything; by the nature of a counter or initiated attack, there will be a transition from defense to attack.

However, the default position in our art, one to which we return as soon as possible, is to protect both high and low lines. If you see a sera practitioner with both hands in front of his face or both in front of his groin, you won’t see them stay that way for long, and you might want to beware of a trap. Some-

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times what looks like an easy shot might only appear to be such.

Another example: we use a triple-word term to describe what we consider a critical function in sera—base-angle-leverage. (We aren’t the only ones who practice this, of course; it is a discovered principle, not one we invented, but it goes under different names.)

Here, before we go on, a little physiology: voluntary muscles work by doing just one thing—they contract. With the limbs as different kinds of levers, this results in two convenient ways to view motion: pulling or pushing. These actions are also hits, blocks, and parries and with an edged weapon, a cut, slash, or stab. A push sped up? A hit, a block, or a parry. A stab. A pull can be a throw. Or a block. Or a hit, or a parry, or a stab. It depends on the intent and position and the tool used.

Back to base-angle-leverage—when we speak of base in this instance, we are talking about footwork, but also balance and position. We differentiate between lower- and upper-base, which might seem counter-intuitive and a bit of a stretch for that term, but we know what we mean.

Angle is a push—or a hit or a block or a parry, or whatever . . . Leverage is a pull, likewise the same. Since we consider this fundamental to our art, these are an unspoken part of every action. We believe that, if you have all three done correctly, you can unbalance any opponent, no matter how big or how skilled, and once they are unbalanced, you have the momentum. With all three, the largest attacker will go down like a chainsawed tree—it is simple physics.

When using a staff, these three principles work the same as in bare-handed. An opponent is open to striking, being blocked, or upended, and one should not feel limited to the stick; hands, elbows, knees, feet, shoulders, all the other weapons are still available.

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One of the problems, as we see it in some martial arts, is that when using an impact or edged weapon, fighters tend to rely on it alone. If somebody is putting all their energy into blocking a stab by a right hand, the attacker’s left hand or a foot or elbow can do serious damage.

One doesn’t fight the weapon; one fights the opponent wielding it.

The underlying system of sera is the same, regardless of the weapon(s) used. The patterns of learned movement won’t be precisely the same with a fist or a short knife or a staff, of course, but the principles will be.

So, targeting, back-up, feints, changing lines of attack, moving your targets off-line—not only do they work with the staff, you will likely have more time to affect your techniques. We believe that timing equals distance, and if you are outside your weapon’s range but inside mine? If I can hit you, but you can’t hit me? It is my advantage to lose.

Too, we believe that underestimating an opponent is a bad idea.

If I think you have a knife, and you don’t? It doesn’t cost me anything to be wrong. If I think you are empty-handed and you have a

It’s less about power and speed, and more about timing and position.

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concealed knife? That could be a fatal mistake. Assuming the worst and being prepared for it is generally a better idea than assuming the best and being surprised when the worst happens.

In our staff work, we tend to practice against each other using them.

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An opponent who is equally skilled and equally armed is more dangerous than one who is less or unskilled and sporting inferior weaponry.

If my opponent has a weapon equal to mine? Then other factors decide the outcome.

Size does matter. I would rather have a five-foot-long hardwood staff in hand against a knife or sword than be waving an eighteen-inch stick or my bare hands.

With a spear, which is but a staff with a point, and one that can have sharp edges, there are more options, but nearly everything one can do with a spear other than slashing or stabbing is replicable with a staff, and using either end, much like escrima sticks can mimic blades.

As many arts do, we employ drills to get used to handling a fighting staff. These drills are not something one takes into a serious dustup.

Learning a weapon requires mindful practice, and the whirls and twirls and counter-for-counter get one used to the balance and feel and range of a tool. Just how far can it reach? How to choke up on it when the action gets close?

Moving in balance while striking or blocking? Some of these things are more productively practiced as solo drills, watching in a mirror.

As with our forms, the djurus, we like to think of such drills as primary ways to move efficiently.

One metaphor is the ingredients of flour, sugar, water, and eggs.

These ingredients all go into baking cakes, cookies, pie dough, or donuts. It all depends on how much and how they are mixed.

Sometimes, a stick is just a stick, but a well-practiced staff can be a lifesaver . . .

Stevan Plinck @Pukulanpentjaksilatseraplinck

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Stick Arts VOL 1, ISSUE 2

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