Light Quark Masses in Multi-Quark Interactions

We suggest and discuss in detail a multi-quark three flavor Lagrangian of the Nambu -- Jona-Lasinio type, which includes a set of effective interactions proportional to the current quark masses. It is shown that within the dynamical chiral symmetry breaking regime, the masses of the pseudo Goldstone bosons and their chiral partners, members of the low lying scalar nonet, are in perfect agreement with current phenomenological expectations. The role of the new interactions is analyzed.