This paper unpacks tensions and weighs ethics among concepts of musical creativity and globalization through the music and career of Cyro Baptista (b. 1950), a New York-based Brazilian percussionist, composer, collaborator, and bandleader. Specifically, the analysis will focus on cultural anthropophagy (cultural cannibalism of Brazilian modernism, with which Baptista self-identifies) in relation to appropriation, exoticism, and experimentalism. To interpret Baptista’s work through these charged terms foregrounds the ethics of creative appropriation of globally eclectic musical experimentations; yet the paper will avoid passing excessive judgement. Especially in his own projects, Baptista’s ensembles comingle culturally iconic instruments (berimbau, cuíca, oud, gimbri, kora), myriad percussion, vocal sounds, grooves, and melodic characteristics from Brazil, North Africa, and jazz as well as nature-inspired soundscapes. Since the 1980s, Baptista developed his works collaboratively in and around New York City. He participated in overlapping circles of eclectic experimentalists: fellow Brazilians Hermeto Pascoal and Naná Vasconcelos (his closest mentors), Woodstock’s Creative Music Studio, and New York City’s downtown music scene. As a first-call percussionist, he toured and recorded with John Zorn, Paul Simon, Herbie Hancock, Osvaldo Golijov, Trey Anastasio, and others. The paper draws on original ethnographic research and analysis of his recordings, online videos, and critical reception, and is informed by musicological studies of anthropophagy (Harvey, Averbach, Della Torre), appropriation (Born and Hesmondhalgh, Feld, Young), the Brazilian musical diaspora (Stanyek, Goldschmitt, Perrone and Dunn), Latin American experimentalism (Alonso-Minutti, Herrera, and Madrid), and New York’s experimental jazz and downtown scenes (Gazit, Heller, Lewis, Barzel).