Juan de Marcos Gonzalez has mad skills.

As the bandleader for the Afro-Cuban All Stars, he’s taken the band around the world since the late 1990s, riding the wave of popularity that was buoyed by Wim Wenders’ documentary “Buena Vista Social Club.”

It’s safe to say that the revitalized popularity worldwide of Afro-Cuban music is due in large part to Gonzalez. He introduced American roots-rock musician Ry Cooder to the Cuban singers and musicians who formed the backbone of what became the Buena Vista Social Club, as seen in the popular film — legends like the late, great Ibrahim Ferrer, Omara Portuondo and Ruben Gonzalez.

After the movie was released, Gonzalez and the band began touring in support of the venerable performers featured in “Buena Vista Social Club,” playing acclaimed concerts. The Afro-Cuban All Stars are now a headlining act on their own, and Gonzalez is a spokesman for the captivating music he has helped popularize.

All this despite a five-year travel restriction between Cuba and the United States, started in 2003 by the INS under the George W. Bush administration. (Gonzalez and his family were then Havana residents.) The States’ loss was the rest of the world’s gain, as the Afro-Cuban All Stars were still able to spread the good rhythm to places like Asia, Europe and Australia/New Zealand during that time.

Since 2009, Gonzalez and the band have been playing American cities again. The group arrived in Hawaii Monday for a three-date interisland tour.

Gonzalez spoke to the Star-Advertiser by phone last Friday as a successful three-night engagement in Seattle had just concluded.

“Everything’s OK now,” Gonzalez said, “since we have a smart president who was born in Hawaii, who realized this 50-year embargo against Cuba didn’t work. It’s ironic that America, a country of freedom, didn’t allow visits to and from Cuba at one time. I’m glad the restrictions have been eliminated.

“Restrictions that were once enforced due to political and economic reasons didn’t work in cultural terms,”he said. “The history of Afro-Cuban music shows that, as it was a big influence on the jazz tradition, starting in New Orleans.”

At tomorrow’s show, expect a great, full sound from the band, which includes Gonzalez on tres (a small guitarlike instrument), a horn line of trumpets/flugelhorns and trombones, bass clarinet, piano, standup bass, various percussion and a front line of three singers, numbering 16 musicians in total.

WHILE ALL of the syncopated styles of Afro-Cuban music are danceable — bolero, cha-cha, salsa, guajira, danzon and rumba, to name just a few — it’s Gonzalez’s intention to showcase all of the music in a sit-down concert setting. Well, at first anyway, since the All Stars play more dance-appropriate music as they work their way toward the conclusion of a concert.

“We will perform a wide spectrum of the music,” he said, “doing different styles — not only pachanga (party music). I’m hoping the audience in Hawaii will appreciated the variation. It’s our first time in Hawaii, and if it’s anything like the response we got from the island people in New Zealand where we did a festival, it should make for a good time.

“Music is the most international language of all, especially when it comes to ours, where the accent comes down on the fourth or second half on the fourth beat,” Gonzalez said. It’s a natural rhythm. The body is practically asking to dance when it comes to Afro-Cuban music.”

Not that Afro-Cuban music is a completely foreign sound and rhythm to the Western world. Gonzalez points out that Afro-Cuban’s influence could be heard during rock music’s heyday of the late 1960s through early ’70s, when bands like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Santana appropriated the music as some of their own.

Gonzalez calls Mexico City home now, mostly for his daughter’s educational opportunities, but travels to Havana on a regular basis.

Those trips continue to inspire, and Gonzalez plans to get the band back into the recording studio this year to do a follow-up to its 2006 Grammy-nominated album, “Step Forward.”

“I have the idea to bring in 12 new songs to the project,” he said, “and I plan to make this new album, titled ‘Breaking the Rules,’ to be a combination CD/DVD set, with footage from a recent show at a place that I particularly like, the Strathmore in Washington, D.C. The album will be filled with Cuban musicians from all over the world, not only Cuba and the U.S., but Canada, Europe and Asia. This will send a message to the politicians that we all have a strong identity and cultural ties to our homeland. We are all members of the Cuban family.”