  We describe a procedure to extend the light-front holographic approach to
hadronic physics to include light-quark masses. The proposed framework allows
us to extend the formalism of de Alfaro, Fubini and Furlan to the
frame-independent light-front Hamiltonian theory in the approximation where the
dynamics in the invariant transverse variable is unchanged to first order in
the quark masses. The confinement potential follows from an effective theory
which encodes the fundamental conformality of the classical QCD Lagrangian and
leads to a semiclassical relativistic light-front wave equation for arbitrary
spin. In particular, the K meson spectrum is successfully described without
modifying the emerging confinement scale. The Wilson loop criteria for
confinement is maintained, since for light quark masses a harmonic potential
and linear Regge trajectories in the light-front form of dynamics corresponds
to a linear potential in the usual instant-form.
