The Immersion Review - Stick Arts #2 by The Immersion Foundation

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

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

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

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.

AFRICAN STICK FIGHTING

Jigaba Bwaira | 15

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.

GRIMA

T. J. Desch-Obi, Ph.D | 23

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-

BONAFONT ARGENTINE CANE

Jorge Prina | 41

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

SERRADA NG ESCRIMA

JC Cabiero | 53

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.

INDIAN LATHI

Mahesh Kumar Ramakrishna | 71

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

NATIVE AMERICAN WAR CLUB

Bethany J. Dillon | 93

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.

ITALIAN STICK FIGHTING

Dr. Marco Quarta | 119

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

JOGO DO PAU

Pedro Silva | 139

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

JOGO DO PAU

Pedro Silva | 141

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.

Post-Script: JOGO DO PAU

Vincent Tamer | 155

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

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:

STICKS: BRANCHING OUT

Toby Cowern | 183

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.

JO JUTSU

Henri-Robert Vilaire | 191

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

PENTJAK SILAT SERA

Stevan Plinck | 207

Stick Arts VOL 1, ISSUE 2