Cyro Baptista

In 2009 Baptista won a Fellow Award in Music from United States Artists.

The album Beat the Donkey was picked by Jon Pareles of The New York Times as one of the ten best alternative albums of 2002. Readers of JAZZIZ magazine and DRUM magazine voted it Best Brazilian CD of the Year and named Baptista Best Percussionist of 2002. Down Beat magazine's 51st annual Critics' Poll selected Baptista as 'Rising Star' in percussion. A documentary about Beat the Donkey that was a recorded WGBH-TV in Boston program won three New England EMMY Awards in 2002.

Baptista appeared in Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel's 1990 documentary film Step Across the Border about Fred Frith, He composed music for programs for the children's television network Nickelodeon.

Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Baptista arrived in the U.S. in 1980 with a scholarship to Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York.

During the 1980s, he worked on films with John Zorn and appeared on Zorn's albums in the 1990s. Also in the '90s, he appeared on albums by Marisa Monte, Holly Cole, and Cassandra Wilson. In 1997 he released his first solo album, Vira Loucos, with cover versions of music by Heitor Villa-Lobos. The album was recorded with Marc Ribot and Nana Vasconcelos and released by Avant, a label owned by Zorn. He was a member of Zorn's band Dreamers.

Cyro Baptista (born December 23, 1950) is a Brazilian percussionist in jazz and world music. He creates many of the percussion instruments he plays.