The 17-piece Afro-Cuban All Stars are an international project. Current members hail from Finland, Stockholm, and beyond, and the band's leader, Juan de Marcos, lives in Mexico City with his wife and daughters.

De Marcos says that all of the band members are 100-percent Cuban, despite living in other countries and on other continents.

”You know Cubans, we can live abroad of course, but we don't lose the Cubanity, if this word does exist,” says de Marcos.

And of the Cuban expatriates living on U.S. soil, de Marcos says they live their lives and work their American jobs by day, “but when they get back home, they live in Cuba, so they drink very strong coffee, they smoke, they dance to Cuban music, they play dominos... They live in 'inxile,' if this word does exist, instead of exile, they are 'inxiles'--they live within Cuba without being there.”

That strong Cuban heritage is one of the requirements for being a part of the Afro-Cuban All Stars, a group that de Marcos says is “not a band. It's a project.” Other requirements are that each member is a “good person” and a great musician.

De Marcos formed the Afro-Cuban All Stars in the '90s, after his prior band Sierra Maestra had won some international acclaim. He was looking to share the “classic Cuban sound of the '50s” with a worldwide audience and first put together the “Buena Vista Social Club” sessions, which created a worldwide interest in Cuban culture and arts.

The Afro-Cuban All Stars is a Cuban big band.

”We cannot play Cuban music as a rock 'n' roll band with four members and a lot of noise,” says de Marcos. “We need a big brass section--imagine something like Duke Ellington or something like this--this is the flavor of the Cuban music. It's a big brass section, a lot of singers, it's a huge band.”

The current line-up includes musicians de Marcos has played with since his early days with Sierra Maestra and the Buena Vista Social Club sessions.

”We are all close friends,” says de Marcos. “We have been without playing together for a long time. Right now is kind of a meeting of old friends that are going to enjoy performing together... It's a very nice situation and I'm very happy to have such outstanding musicians to perform again and be on-stage.”

A conversation with de Marcos can't help but cover some socio-political ground, discussing Cuban-American relations and the American embargo on Cuban arts, since 2003, when he says that some “extreme right-wing” lobbyists convinced then-President George W. Bush that “the presence of Cuban musicians in America was dangerous for America or something stupid like this.”

De Marcos hopes that President Obama will see the error in President Bush's ways and overturn the embargo.

One way that the Afro-Cuban All Stars have been able to book this U.S. tour is that all of the current band members currently live outside of Cuba. To that end, the band recorded a new album to be released this year, which they named “Breaking the Rules,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to their successful skirting of the embargo.

De Marcos and the Afro-Cuban All Stars will play at the Van Duzer Theatre at Humboldt State University this Sunday, Feb. 22, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $45 general admission and $25 for H.S.U. students.

-- Monica Topping