INTERVIEW: Juan De Marcos carries the torch of traditional Cuban music

Juan De Marcos is one of the most significant and successful Cuban musicians of all time, a man involved with the world-famous Buena Vista Social Club recordings and his own band, the Afro-Cuban All-Stars. The bandleader shows no signs of slowing down either. He’s currently touring the United States, coming to New Jersey and New York this week, and promoting a new double live album that captures his band’s dedication to multiple Cuban music genres.

“We’re going to be presenting music off the new album,” De Marcos said in a recent phone interview. “We’re going to play music in the different styles of the Cuban music, and as always, we are going to try to bring the audience [on] a journey to Cuba, a journey through the Cuban music, which is very diverse and very special. … Cuban music has been, I think, one of the most influential styles worldwide, not only what you call Latin jazz, but also rock ‘n’ roll and all different styles of folk-rock music in the world.”

The band’s latest recording is called Absolutely Live II, which features performances from the Cervantino International Festival in Guanajuato, Mexico, and the Strathmore Center for the Arts in Bethesda, Maryland.

De Marcos admitted that he was hesitant to put out a new album. “Well, I’m going to be absolutely honest,” he said. “For years, I was reluctant to record a new album because I didn’t understand peripherally this new wave of the digital world because I like to have the physical things in my hands, so normally when I have something to say, then I record an album. And I had something to say in the last few years, so I prepared an album. It’s a live album … with a video portion and an audio portion, and it’s dedicated to the old guys that began with me on this adventure of the Afro-Cuban All-Stars.”

The band was created more than 20 years ago during the recording sessions for the Buena Vista Social Club, one of the most important Cuban albums of all time and a leader among world music offerings. The “old guys” that helped him in 1996 are now sources of inspiration for De Marcos.

“I wanted to make a tribute to the old guys that used to work with me, so I prepared an album, a live album, featuring some of the songs that we recorded at the Buena Vista Social Club and the first Afro-Cuban All-Stars album and some of the new music that I wrote especially for the album,” he said. “I took excerpts of the live performance, and then I created a double album featuring the video and the audio. It’s very live. The songs are long because it’s a live performance, but the people like it. The people like it very much. Right now the sales are not the same as before because everything is moving within the digital world, but it’s going good. And the people appreciate the music and appreciate that there’s an album. … Everything is exactly as happened on stage — no auto-tune, no tricks, no illusions.”

De Marcos considers himself an ambassador of Cuban music, and he takes this role quite seriously. The band members, consisting of younger musicians, are bringing the sounds of his island nation to the world, and De Marcos believes this is a first step for cultural understanding and appreciation.

“I think that I have that responsibility to show the world what we have done in our country,” he said. “I think that we we have one of the most important popular music [styles] of the world, together with the best rum and the best cigars and the best coffee, and I feel myself as a kind of ambassador that’s bringing to the different audiences worldwide a piece of our country, a piece of our culture, a piece of our identity. It’s very important for me to present this to the people and to defend the spirit of Cuba, which is, as I said before, a small country, but it’s very important. And I hope, I think that I have done it in a certain sense.”

He added: “Right now, the musicians that are performing with me are younger. The old guys are all gone because this is the normal cycle of the universe, but we are still on the road. And I think that I’m going to be performing as this for five more years, and then I’m going to retire and write music for the young guys.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Juan De Marcos and the Afro-Cuban All-Stars will perform Wednesday, Jan. 10 at the South Orange Performing Arts Center in South Orange, New Jersey, in addition to other dates in the United States. Click here for more information and tickets.