The 80-year-old market trader who became a Chilean music star

At a concert hall in the Chilean capital, Santiago, an 80-year-old man edges unsteadily down a steep staircase. With one hand he grips the metal bannister, in the other he carries a mug of hot water with a slice of lemon, as if heading to bed.

But when the red stage curtain is pulled aside for him, Luis Gómez, or JM as he is universally known, transforms in an instant. He skips on to the stage to a roar from the crowd and launches into a bolero, punctuated by hip thrusts and shuffling two-steps.

JM is the frontman of Los Crack del Puerto, and one of the last remaining voices of a golden generation.

Born and raised in Valparaíso, Chile’s vibrant second city, JM’s late foray into music has taken him all around the country, as well as to Mexico, the UK, Argentina and France.

But things could – and probably should – have worked out very differently.

At 65, he was still hawking vegetables at the market he had worked at since the age of eight.

This May, Los Crack del Puerto released their fourth record, Lo Mucho Que Nos Queda (So Much Yet to Come), as a cassette – to great acclaim.

“Singing has always been my release,” JM says in a wavering voice, in contrast to his confident onstage vocals.

The father of two speaks with captivating enthusiasm about his life, often leaping to his feet to re-enact minor scenes. Scattered with bursts of song, most conversations return to his mostly tongue-in-cheek fear of his wife of 55 years, his penchant for sports clothing, or the market on Avenida Argentina in Valparaíso.

JM was born in the O’Higgins neighbourhood of Valparaíso in 1945, the youngest of five children. He was three years old when his father died, and 10 when he lost his mother. For a time, he would sleep out on the street between parked cars, until his aunt and uncle took him in and laid down the law, insisting that he was home by 10pm each night.

“JM” was a cheeky nickname bestowed upon him by the family – the initials of a childhood friend, Juan Muñoz, with whom they said he spent too much time. The moniker has long since replaced his full name.

Valparaíso then, as it is now, was defined by its music. As in many ports, cultures and ideals have long arrived in the city and been woven into its fabric; but the musical styles of its 20th-century heyday, from boleros to waltzes, tango to cueca, Chile’s official national dance, have barely changed in generations.

“The same songs that were sung before are still the ones they sing now,” says JM decisively. Many now form Los Crack del Puerto’s repertoire.

One of his cousins, Juan Navarro, known simply as Juanín, would bring friends home and play his guitar for them, and the younger JM would come sing along.

The cousins remained lifelong friends while Juanín pursued a career in the police and JM sold vegetables at the market.

“That’s still what I am – a market trader,” he says.

Through middle age, the self-taught double act entertained crowds in Valparaíso’s bars – JM the entertaining foil to his more serious older cousin, who would perch on a stool to play his guitar, always in an immaculate pressed suit.

“Sometimes Juanín would just invent chords,” says Los Crack del Puerto’s manager, Juan Nuñez. “The rest of the band would stop and ask him what chord he’d just played, and he’d just shrug.”

“JM was the entertainer, he can make anyone laugh,” Nuñez adds.

But the dynamic worked. In 2017, JM and Juanín began taking their music more seriously, forming the band with a group of talented local musicians.

“That generation is an intangible cultural heritage. They’re a living legacy,” says 33-year-old musician Felipe Riveros, who has played with JM as a guitarist.

“He’s charismatic. People go mad when he comes on stage. He and Juanín are the archetypes of the old porteño.”

Juanín died in 2025 at the age of 87.

“For three or four months, I missed him so much, I couldn’t bring myself to get back on stage,” says JM of his cousin. “People would request Juanín’s songs, but they were his, I didn’t feel like we could play them.”

Now, as JM approaches his 81st birthday, the royalty cheques that supplement his miserly state pension are of little consequence to him.

“I never planned any of this, and I’d be happy still working at the market,” he says quietly during a break between songs at the Quinta de los Nuñez, a hillside restaurant where he sings every Sunday for an adoring crowd.

“But I suppose it’s never too late to give something a try.”