Ned Sublette, born in 1951 in Lubbock, Texas, is an American composer and musicologist. He studied Spanish Classical Guitar at the University of New Mexico and composition at the University of California, San Diego. Sublette led the Ned Sublette Band in the 1980s and was known for fusing country-western and Afro-Caribbean styles on albums like Cowboy Rumba (1999), which reached Number 1 on World Music Charts Europe in December 1999. Sublette has collaborated with notable figures such as John Cage, LaMonte Young, and Pauline Oliveros. He is also a leading scholar of Cuban music, authoring books like Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (2004).