The AdS/CFT correspondence has brought a completely new set of computational tools for studying the dynamics of strongly coupled QCD.  Starting from the bound state Hamiltonian equation of motion in QCD we discuss the remarkable connection between a semiclassical first approximation to QCD quantized on the light-front and the wave equations which describe hadronic modes propagating on a fixed AdS background. Applications to the light meson and baryon spectra are presented.