Los Lobos will receive El Premio Billboard, a lifetime achievement award, at this year's Billboard Latin Music Awards. The honor follows a year with two important looks back for the band, which is nearing the mark of a quarter-century of recording. Last September, the group's very first album, the Spanish-language Del Este de Los Angeles, was reissued, followed by the four-disc retrospective El Cancionero: Mas y Mas in November.

"Los Lobos continue to break ground in both Spanish and English-language music, effortlessly crossing cultural and language divides," said Leila Cobo, Billboard's Latin/Caribbean Bureau Chief. "Their status as possibly the most longstanding bicultural, bilingual band in the nation makes them the recipients of this year's Lifetime Achievement Award."

The Billboard Latin Music Awards will be held at the Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami on April 26th and will be broadcast on April 29th on the Telemundo Network.

In other Lobos news, this week, the band shifted from Hollywood to Mammoth Records. Los Lobos plan to enter the studio in the spring and release their Mammoth debut later this year. It will be the band's first album of new material since 1999's This Time.

ANDREW DANSBY
(April 3, 2001)