KUMBIA KINGS BRING TEJANO TO THE FUTURE
Corpus Christi band finds urban market
By RAMIRO BURR
Houston Chronicle

San Antonio has long been recognized as the world capital of Tejano music.

But in recent years Corpus Christi, where the roots of the influential Kumbia Kings are, has evolved into the bright-shining sun of Tejano's solar system, even as Tejano struggles to remain viable in a down market. The band's new album, Fuego, recently hit stores.

"The cool thing about the Kumbia Kings is that they are Mexican-American, completely bilingual and bicultural," says Homie Marco, disc jockey at Houston's top hip-hop station, KPTY, and former program director at KQQK, Houston's top Tejano station. "The reason they have had success is that they found the way to get the younger audience back into the music, kind of like Selena in the early '90s."

The chart-topping Kumbia Kings, led by former Selena bassist A.B. Quintanilla III and ex-La Sombra keyboardist Cruz Martinez, are on the mostly Texas-based cumbia-dance edge of a larger movement some labels term the urban regional market. These new groups, in varying degrees, fuse hip-hop and urban elements with traditional norteño and banda rhythms. Similar groups include ATM, La Sombra, Big Circo, Kingz 1 and Grupo Chevere. But the movement also encompasses other camps, such as the hard-core banda/norteño/hip-hop fusionists popular on the West Coast, including Akwid, Mexiclan and Lil J.

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