La Mafia

The chart-topping, Grammy-winning Tejano band La Mafia from Houston, Texas are among the most enduring, successful, and versatile bands to emerge from the city’s music scene. As Texas Monthly put it back in the late ’90s, “They are to Latin music what Willie Nelson and ZZ Top are to country and rock.” For 40-plus years, La Mafia have changed members with almost alarming regularity, yet with each change they have evolved, wedding their Tejano roots to cumbia, Latin soul, tropical rhythms, electronic funk, R&B, and stadium rock while remaining close to the vintage polkas, corridos, romanticas, and boleros of their youth. They are a rarity among Latin bands: Instead of trying to become successful in El Norte first, they started in Texas and went south and east before reaching back into their native United States.