Sérgio Dias, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Rita Lee, Nara Leão and Gal Costa durante el estreno de Tropicália, August 12, 1968
As we have seen, tropicalismo came from a rich lineage of Brazilian traditions. Imitation became a way to respect this Brazilian path, while expressing feelings about the contemporary situation at the same time. For the tropicalistas, imitation allowed a fusion of all of the elements of modern music, from its intellectual aspects, to its relevance with daily life. Tropicalismo was a way to continue thinking about the future without ignoring why other styles of music succeeded with the public. In this way, imitation in the tropicalismo movement is a way to modernize the music and the experience to adapt to the present and establish a style that reveals the latent potential in Brazil's important culture.
It is relevant to consider antropofagia, or cannibalism, a vanguard movement headed by Osvaldo do Andrade during the 1920s, to understand this mixture. Antropofagia is a critical way of observing foreign cultural products to understand how they are related with international tastes and see how they reflect the culture of their country of origin (Dunn 74). This consideration showed the tropicalistas a way to imitate, reevaluate, and reject what they saw in the international market. Further, their understanding of how foreigners saw Brazilian culture made possible a parody of the established stereotypes in order to question their meaning. For this reason, tropicalismo reflected what was happening in Brazil, in national and international music, and in the use of the media.