Sublette, Ned, 1951-

Sublette moved to New York in 1976. In the early 1980s he organized his own band, which blended country western music with the Afro-Caribbean rhythms. He went to Cuba in 1990 to study the local music scene and became a leading scholar of Cuban music. He was senior co-producer of the weekly public radio program Afropop Worldwide and led musical-study tours of Cuba in association with the program. He owns and operates the record label Qbadisc, which pioneered the marketing of post-revolutionary Cuban music in the United States and continues to release recordings by artists from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nigeria and the former Zaire. He has done countless concerts and festival in the U.S. playing his songs and the work of others, and has performed in Europe. One of his albums, "Cowboy Rumba," reached number one on the World Music Charts of Europe in 1999. It combined the Texan country style of his roots with Latin music, as he collaborated with musicians from Cuba, Puerto Rica, the Dominican Republic, and the New York salsa community. He composed an opera, inspired by the life of Simone Weil, that has been performed in Australia. He is also a photographer and many of his photos, especially those from Cuba, have been shown in galleries and published widely. His book, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, was published in 2004. He was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow. In 2006, Willie Nelson released Sublette's song "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other," in the wake of the success of the film, Brokeback Mountain. Sublette's book, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square, was published in 2008, followed by The Year Before The Flood: A Story of New Orleans in 2009.

Ned Sublette is a well-known guitarist, singer, bandleader, performer, musicologist, composer, record producer, author and photographer. Born Pleas Edward Sublette in Lubbock, Texas, in 1951, he grew up in Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico, living most of his early childhood in Portales. Sublette learned Spanish classical guitar with Hector Garcia at the University of New Mexico and spent several summers studying with Emilio Pujol in Spain. He got his B.A. in Classical Music from UNM in 1972. He worked as a student assistant in the UNM Fine Arts Department. On a volunteer basis, he compiled for the library an index called "A Discography of Hispanic Music in the Fine Arts Library of the University of New Mexico," published in Sources, Volume 1, April 1973, by UNM. After leaving UNM, he studied music composition with Kenneth Gaburo at the University of California, San Diego. He also composed an unaccompanied vocal and choral quartet piece, in Xhosa, Catalan, and English, entitled "Embarussaments: For Four Speaking Voices," in 1974, published in La Jolla, CA by Lingua Press, ca. 1977. With funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ned Sublette organized and directed two Radio Performance Projects and a Radio Production Workshop at KUNM-FM in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He did musicology field work in New Mexico and recorded the songs in this collection for the Archive of Southwestern Music at the UNM Fine Arts Library in August 1977.

Sublette moved to New York in 1976. In the early 1980s he organized his own band, which blended country western music with the Afro-Caribbean rhythms. He went to Cuba in 1990 to study the local music scene and became a leading scholar of Cuban music. He was senior co-producer of the weekly public radio program Afropop Worldwide and led musical-study tours of Cuba in association with the program. He owns and operates the record label Qbadisc, which pioneered the marketing of post-revolutionary Cuban music in the United States and continues to release recordings by artists from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nigeria and the former Zaire. He has done countless concerts and festival in the U.S. playing his songs and the work of others, and has performed in Europe. One of his albums, "Cowboy Rumba," reached number one on the World Music Charts of Europe in 1999. It combined the Texan country style of his roots with Latin music, as he collaborated with musicians from Cuba, Puerto Rica, the Dominican Republic, and the New York salsa community. He composed an opera, inspired by the life of Simone Weil, that has been performed in Australia. He is also a photographer and many of his photos, especially those from Cuba, have been shown in galleries and published widely. His book on Cuban music, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, was published in 2004. He was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow. In 2006, Willie Nelson released Sublette's song "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other," in the wake of the success of the film, Brokeback Mountain. Sublette’s book, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square, was published in 2008, followed by The Year Before The Flood: A Story of New Orleans in 2009.