Brazil · Single-string musical bow instrument making
Construção de Berimbau
The making of the berimbau — a single-stringed musical bow consisting of a curved wood bow (verga or arco), a steel string (arame), and a resonating chamber made from a dried, hollowed gourd (cabaça) — the leading instrument of capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian martial art blending music, ritual, and movement. Descended from African musical bows such as Angola's mbulumbumba, the berimbau took root in Brazil through the transatlantic slave trade and, by the early 20th century, had overtaken the drum as capoeira's primary accompanying instrument, particularly in Bahia. Master craftsman Overlan Lionato da Silva, known throughout and beyond Brazil as 'Bahiano dos berimbaus,' began learning the craft in his early teens by cleaning biriba wood branches for his capoeira teacher, Mestre Estrela, as payment for lessons — a documented apprenticeship-through-labor exchange typical of how many capoeiristas historically entered the trade. Biriba wood, from which the instrument's name derives, is specifically prized for its flexibility, weight, and sound quality, but is documented as facing a genuine sustainability concern: a single biriba branch requires more than three years to regrow to usable size, prompting both individual makers and the formally organized Cachoeira Berimbau Cooperative to actively protect artisanal wood sourcing and production against competition from industrial replicas.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not Applicable as a direct ICH inscription for berimbau-making specifically, though capoeira itself — the cultural practice the berimbau centrally accompanies — was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014
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