Syncopated Siblings

Bill Summers is a fixture on the New Orleans percussion scene. Recognized as a renowned elder of rhythm, Bill specializes in Bàtà but can be found playing any instrument, from timbales to tin cans. Summers has served on the forefront of the jazz fusion and Afro-Cuban jazz movements and is perhaps best known for his work with Herbie Hancock, the Headhunters, and with the GRAMMY-nominated Los Hombres Calientes. Beyond his work in dozens of albums and recordings, Summers has also worked in film: most notably with Quincy Jones on the soundtracks to Roots, The Wiz, and The Color Purple. In recent years, in addition to performing, Bill has developed educational programs to study sacred drumming in Cuba and the New Orleans-based Klub K.I.D., a program to educate young people about music traditions.

Ned Sublette, a former Tulane Rockefeller Humanities Fellow (2004–5) and Guggenheim Fellow, is co-author, with Constance Sublette, of The American Slave Coast (2015) and author of The Year Before the Flood (2009), The World That Made New Orleans (2008), and Cuba and Its Music (2004). In 2016 he founded Postmambo Studies, which offers music-immersion seminars at key sites in the Afro-Atlantic world. He has produced over 100 one-hour documentaries for the public radio program Afropop Worldwide, along with recordings by artists such as Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, Los Van Van, Kanda Bongo Man, Viento de Agua, and his own album Cowboy Rumba (1999). He is the songwriter of “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” (1981), which became a hit for Willie Nelson and Orville Peck in 2024.