From the Habanera to "Louie Louie":
The Other Great Tradition, 5/19/04

Ned: March  2004: NY and National, Cuban Music

Discography

Ned on Rykodisc site
(audio files)

Links

Ned Sublette

A co-founder of Qbadisc, Ned is an artist in his own right and created the cowboy rumba style, a fusion of rumba and country & western. He is a University of New Mexico graduate and a 2003-2004 fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, as well as a 2004-2005 Tulane Rockefeller Humanities Fellow in New Orleans. He has led a number of music and culture seminars for Americans in Cuba and is the producer of the 18 part Cuba Connection series on PRI's Afropop Worldwide as well as the co-creator of the current APWW "Hip Deep" series.

Ned will always be remembered among los Muñequitos fans for his stellar role in getting them well known and on tour.

Cowboy Rumba was #1 on a number of latin stations and is currently (8/9) #11 in New Mexico at Amazon.com. From Rykodisc:

Ned Sublette was born in 1951 in Lubbock, Texas.  Bilingual in English and Spanish since childhood, he grew up in Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico and moved to New York in 1976. His range of musical experience is unusually broad, ranging from original musicological field work in New Mexico, to conservatory study in classical guitar and composition, to aggressive loud-guitar bands, to cutting-edge Latin music.  In the downtown New York new music scene of the 70s and 80s, he worked with artists ranging from John Cage to La Monte Young to Glenn Branca to Peter Gordon's Love of Life Orchestra.  In 1982, he started The Ned Sublette Band ("It wasn't country punk," he recalls, "because all the musicians could really play") with a gig at CBGBs. He became a fixture on the downtown New York club circuit, playing hundreds of gigs with a rotating cast of New York's best players at such notorious and legendary nightspots as Danceteria, the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge, Tramps (the old one) and the Lone Star Cafe.  

By the mid-80s he gravitated toward the salsa scene ("It was the best music in town," he says) and his inspirations grew increasingly Latin.  In January 1990, he traveled to Cuba for the first time and was inspired to co-found Qbadisc, the first American record label dedicated to marketing contemporary Cuban music in the U.S. He was soon recognized as a major U.S. advocate for Cuban music, introducing American audiences to Cuban artists as diverse as Los Muñequitos De Matanzas and NG La Banda as well as Celina González, Issac Delgado, Carlos Varela and Orlando "Maraca" Valle.  In 1998,he also produced the outstanding debut album by the New York-based Puerto Rican group Viento De Agua, and for seven years, he served as senior co-producer of Afropop Worldwide, heard over Public Radio International. He is currently working on a book about Cuban music.

Singer-songwriter-guitarist-bandleader-producer, Ned Sublette is one of the most original figures on the New York music scene, and COWBOY RUMBA (PALMCD2020-2), his debut solo album on Palm Pictures, is equally, and exquisitely, unique.  COWBOY RUMBA is just what the name implies: Ned's lyrics, compositions and vocals combine with a dream team of all-star musicians from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the New York salsa scene and . . . Texas, for an utterly danceable ride.

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