Nyko Maca can smack you down — and
get you dancing

By KARL R. DE MESA, GMANews.TV Your fist smashing a table may be impressive. But in the Brazilian martial art of capoeira the deft, tricky move and the subterfuge of the blind side blow takes center stage. In the late 1990s Nicole Severino was an apprentice capoerista in Canada trying to nail its acrobatic moves. One of these was called the macaco, a jumping flip that looks like you’re turning over yourself backwards. Called such because it imitates the monkeys on the Amazon as they jump from tree to tree. Nicole did it perfectly, prompting her teacher to dub her macaca or female monkey — not only because of her ability to literally be the monkey but also since it fit her to a T. “Everybody in capoeira gets a nickname. Sometimes before or during your training. My teacher named me that because] he says I’m always eating. Which is true. Plus I’m makulit and hyper," says the Nicole. Throughout the interview, the morena singer wuld lean back and bend forward, bum cigarettes from everyone, tap her fingers, cross and uncross her legs, burst into song, and imitate hi-hats played in jazz odd time. A restless bundle of energy newly baptized, it was time to become this persona. Exit Nicole Severino, enter Nyko Maca. Tongues and kicks You may remember Nyko Maca as the first runner-up in the first Star in a Million Grand Showdown. In that memorable finale performance she alone played a piano onstage to Alicia Keyes’ “A Woman’s Worth." She was wrapped in a dress with a multi-colored train that seemed to flow for miles. Nyko Maca may seem like an exotic cacao strain but this 25-year-old is 100 percent Pinoy. She was born and grew up here until, after high school, when she left on scholarship in 1997 to pursue an IB (International Baccalaureate) Degree at the Lester B. Pearson College of Pacific. There, she finished a course in Bilingual Diploma. This training in different tongues now comes in handy for her work at the Berlitz Language Center, where she teaches French, Portuguese, and Spanish (she’s also fluent in English and Filipino, by the way). Back in Canada it was around this time she discovered the joys of capoeira at a local Montreal outfit. “Capoeira is one of the best things that can put you in touch with Brazilian culture. There’s singing, dancing, rhythm, percs, instruments and martial arts. It’s creative and improvisational. Like jazz." School fight Finding that she was slowly getting obsessed by all things Brazilian, Nyko finally decided to fly to Rio in 2002. Being there deepened Nyko’s love not only for the martial art but for Brazilian music. See, capoeria’s strong acrobatic character is also deeply rooted in music, where it’s always played during sessions. Its playful sparring sessions have its own unique soundtrack of percussions, bateria and berimbaus. “You’re taught movements," explains Nyko. “But it’s like a language, so you know the words but it’s up to you to make a sentence. It’s a great blessing that I got to know Brazilian culture through that because it has lots of cultural baggage within it. It also has the African tradition of passing on lessons orally. Like the song will go: `I put a knot on the end and I put another knot on the middle, the outer knot smelled of roses, but the inner knot was the mouth of a wolf.’ So it’s very allegorical." Though music, storytelling, and its own freedom theology is the very essence of capoeira, let’s not forget that it’s also a physical art form designed to hurt people. Nyko confesses that it was this aspect that initially attracted her to capoeria though she’s never actually beaten anybody outside the confines of a sparring circle. There was this incident back in Montreal, however, when Nyko had to lay the smackdown on a rival school student. Right out of the movies, an inter-school kung-fu dispute that had to be settled with combat. Nyko recalls it as a “stupid thing." "There was bad blood between this girl and me," she said. "I felt that they had done certain things which were not quite appropriate. The way that it’s hashed out is physically. You’re not proud of the violence at all but when something needs to be said you also need to know how to send a message. Like when you discipline your kids you need to say it aptly. Not too much, not too little." And yes, Nyko confirms in no uncertain terms that she did teach the girl a lesson. Talk about diplomacy by whoop ass. These days, though, Nyko gets to adjudicate such issues, being the top monkey among Pinoy capoeristas. While she has the highest belt and rank in the land, she admits that the responsibility that comes with it was a surprise just as much as getting the belt. “This whole belt thing, man, sucks more than it’s cool," she laughs “If anybody’s going to get beat up it’s me. It’s like having little brothers and sisters. If something happens to them you got to come in and make sure they’re okay. You have to be a role model for them. All your mistakes and faults also get laid out on the table." Ray of samba Nyko came back to her country of birth in 2004, to help support a local capoeira event. She may have flown here for capoeria, but she stayed for the music. Going by instinct her gamble paid off as she met more and more people who could help her realize the vision of her sound. “I felt like Montreal was closed and the Philippines was open. Possibilities. Unexplored. As a Filipino I wanted to see what kind of music I could produce locally. I didn’t want to claim my ethnicity from abroad just because it was exotic. I wanted to have credibility." Nowadays Nyko indulges her love for electronica, Latin jazz, and broken beat by being the local muse of electro-samba. Think Chemical Brothers and Tito Puente getting smashed one night and jamming. She is joined onstage nowadays by a powerhouse of musicians that includes Louie Talan (bass), Sammy Asuncion (guitars), Koko Bermejo (drums), and Mads Abubakar a.k.a. Neon8 (turntables and programming). To hear Nyko is to be transported to a primal/futurist dance floor where monkeys and laser lights share space. Judging by the resume of her band and our early sneak peek into her forthcoming album, we can’t wait for Nyko Maca to kick our ass.

[Photos by MITCH MAURICIO, iGMA.TV]