Ryland Peter Cooder is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.

Cooder's solo work draws upon many genres. He has played with John Lee Hooker, Captain Beefheart, Taj Mahal, Gordon Lightfoot, Ali Farka Touré, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Randy Newman, Linda Ronstadt, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, David Lindley, The Chieftains, Warren Zevon, Manuel Galbán, The Doobie Brothers, and Carla Olson and The Textones (on record and film). He formed the band Little Village, and produced the album Buena Vista Social Club (1997), which became a worldwide hit; Wim Wenders directed the documentary film of the same name (1999), which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000.

Ryland Peter Cooder was born in Los Angeles on March 15, 1947, the son of Emma Casaroli and Bill Cooder. His mother was of Italian descent. He grew up in Santa Monica, California, and graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1964. During the 1960s, he briefly attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He began playing the guitar when he was three years old. At the age of four, he accidentally stuck a knife in his left eye and has sported a glass eye ever since.

Cooder performed as part of a pickup trio with Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, in which he played banjo. The trio was not successful, but reflecting his early exposure to the instrument, Cooder subsequently applied banjo tunings and the three finger roll to guitar.

Cooder first attracted attention playing with Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, notably on the 1967 album Safe as Milk, after previously having worked with Taj Mahal and Ed Cassidy in the Rising Sons. At a vital "warm-up" performance at the Mt. Tamalpais Festival (June 10–11, 1967) shortly before the scheduled Monterey Pop Festival (June 16–18, 1967), the band began to play "Electricity" and Don Van Vliet froze, straightened his tie, then walked off the 10 ft (3.0 m) stage and landed on manager Bob Krasnow. He later claimed he had seen a girl in the audience turn into a fish, with bubbles coming from her mouth.This aborted any opportunity for breakthrough success at Monterey, as Cooder immediately decided he could no longer work with Van Vliet, effectively quitting both the event and the band on the spot. Cooder also played with Randy Newman, including on 12 Songs. Van Dyke Parks worked with Newman and Cooder during the 1960s. Parks arranged Cooder's "One Meatball" according to Parks' 1984 interview with Bob Claster.

In June 2010, responding to the passage of Arizona SB 1070, he released the single "Quicksand", which tells the story of Mexicans attempting to emigrate to Arizona through the desert. Cooder's critically acclaimed new album Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, released on August 30, 2011, contains politically charged songs such as "No Banker Left Behind" which was inspired by a Robert Scheer column.

In 2011, he published a collection of short stories called Los Angeles Stories, written about people living in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s. The book's characters are mostly talented or skilled, clever or hardworking people living in humble circumstances. With story titles such as "La vida es un sueño" and "Kill me, por favor", the collection's stories often have a Hispanic theme, and the book deals partially with Latinos living in Los Angeles during this time.

On April 22, 2022, Cooder and Taj Mahal released Get on Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee.