K-Paz De La Sierra is one of the leading exponents of duranguense, a genre of Mexican music that found popularity among the expatriate Mexican-American community in the USA in the early 00s. Similar to the established banda and norteño musical forms, duranguense is played at a notably quicker tempo with the emphasis on the bass drum.
K-Paz De La Sierra was formed in Chicago, Illinois, at the start of the new millennium by Mexican expatriates Sergio Gómez (b. 1973, d. 2 December 2007, Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico; lead vocals), Oscar Zepeda (vocals), Jair Loredo (drums), Armando Rodríguez (tambora), Jose Luis Corral (tambora), Simon Valtierrez (vocals, tuba), and Rafael Solís (keyboards). They enjoyed an immediate impact with their first single, ‘Con Olor A Hierba’, with a string of Latin American hits following over the course of the next three years, including ‘Jambalaya’, ‘Volveré’, ‘La Vecinita’, and ‘Si Tu Te Fueras De Mi’. The group temporarily split up at the end of 2004, with Loredo, Zepeda, Valtierrez, and Corral going on to form Autoridad De La Sierra. Gómez, Rodríguez and Solís regrouped with new members Luis Vidales (tuba), Oscar Ledezma (tuba), Gerardo Ramírez (keyboards) and Carmelo Gamboa (drums), and returned to the recording scene in 2005 with the album Mas Capaces Que Nunca. Their popularity showed no sign of diminishing, with the singles ‘Pero Te Vas A Arrepentir’, ‘Mi Credo’, ‘El Pasadiscos’, ‘Procuro Olvidarte’, and ‘Y Aquí Estoy’ all charting highly over the next three years.
Another major split took placed in May 2007, with Solís, Ledezma, Rodríguez, Gamboa and Vidales leaving to form a rival duranguense unit, AK-7. Tragedy struck later in the year when Gómez was murdered by kidnappers on 2 December. Three new members, Miguel Galindo, Luis Guadarrama and Humberto Durán, were brought into the line-up to replace him.
