Esse Quilombo É Nosso ♫

Maria Conga
Esse quilombo é nosso
Esse quilombo é seu, é meu
Esse quilombo é nosso

Esse quilombo é seu, é meu
Esse quilombo é nosso

Maria Conga
This quilombo is ours
This quilombo is yours, it’s mine
This quilombo is ours

This quilombo is yours, it’s mine
This quilombo is ours

Did you know?

Maria Conga is celebrated in capoeira history not as an academy master, but as a legendary Afro-Brazilian freedom fighter and symbol of resistance.
Originally born in the Congo, she was captured and brought to Brazil as an enslaved woman before eventually gaining her freedom.
She became a heroic quilombola leader, founding a massive, fortified sanctuary (quilombo) for escaped slaves in Magé, Rio de Janeiro.
Her sanctuary preserved African cultural traditions, martial practices, and rhythms that directly fed into the evolution of capoeira.
She is permanently immortalized in the capoeira wheel (roda) through iconic, widely sung chants like "Maria Conga, esse quilombo é nosso".
Beyond capoeira culture, her ancestral legacy transitioned into spiritual folklore, where she is revered as a wise Preta Velha guide.

A quilombo was a self-governing, fortified community established deep in the Brazilian wilderness by escaped slaves, indigenous peoples, and marginalized groups seeking absolute freedom.
These hidden settlements functioned as powerful, independent mini-states that sustained themselves through agriculture, trade, metallurgy, and highly sophisticated defensive warfare.
Within these communities, the mixing of diverse African martial traditions and survival strategies directly laid the physical and cultural groundwork for capoeira.
They served as essential sanctuaries for the preservation of forbidden African spiritual practices, music, languages, and ancestral rhythms away from colonial control.
The most massive federation, Quilombo dos Palmares, resisted decades of military assaults from European superpowers before its capital finally fell in 1694.
Today, the concept is celebrated in countless traditional songs as the ultimate symbol of black sovereignty, collective resistance, and the ancestral birthplace of the art.