Mestre Camisa

José Tadeu Carneiro Cardoso, known in capoeira as Mestre Camisa, was born on 28 October 1955 at Fazenda Estiva in the municipality of Jacobina, Bahia. His older brother Edvaldo Carneiro da Silva, called Camisa Roxa, introduced him to capoeira and encouraged his early training. After moving toward Salvador, Camisa trained in rodas associated with Mestres Waldemar and Traíra before entering Mestre Bimba's academy, linking him directly to the Capoeira Regional tradition.

In the early 1970s, Camisa toured Brazil with a folkloric performance company led by Camisa Roxa, where capoeira was presented alongside other Afro-Brazilian and popular forms. This theatrical work became part of his professional formation. In 1972 he settled in Rio de Janeiro, began teaching, and entered the city's capoeira networks, where he worked within the Grupo Senzala environment during much of the following period.

Camisa's experience as a teacher led him to systematize capoeira material that had often been transmitted informally. He developed progressive exercises, technical sequences, and a graduation structure while keeping the roda as the heart of practice—the place where timing, dialogue, strategy, and musical knowledge meet. His method draws openly from Mestre Bimba but reflects decades of Rio practice, performance, and his own experimentation rather than replicating Bimba's academy unchanged.

In 1988, Camisa founded the Associação Brasileira de Apoio e Desenvolvimento da Arte-Capoeira, known as ABADÁ-Capoeira. The organization combined technical training with teacher development, public events, and social-education work. ABADÁ branches subsequently spread across Brazil and internationally, establishing a network for transmitting capoeira as an integrated practice of movement, game, music, ritual, and social relationship.

Camisa's recorded cantigas and berimbau toques are part of his teaching ecology, integral to how ABADÁ transmits knowledge. In 2010, the Federal University of Uberlândia's university council approved the title Doctor Honoris Causa for José Tadeu Carneiro Cardoso in recognition of his mastery of Capoeira Regional. As of 2026, Mestre Camisa remained active in ABADÁ teaching and events, operating within the wider capoeira community recognized when UNESCO inscribed the capoeira circle on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014.