Ilan Amores, the Argentine who blends punk and cumbia without asking permission: "I really like the imagery of this singer, who's half poet, half pirate, half buccaneer."

Among the narrow streets of Seville's Old Town, flanked by ochre buildings with hints of yellow, Ilan Amores (Buenos Aires, 1992) takes a small digital camera out of his pocket and begins recording. "Say hello," he says, smiling. The silver, worn Canon has been with him since his first tour with the Argentine punk band Argies. "I bought it at a market in Italy many years ago, and since then, I record everything, wherever I go. Memories are best preserved with a camera. Look at that special color it has," he mutters as we wander, guitar on his back, toward the bohemian Alameda de Hércules. A phrase that sounds, without meaning to, like a distant echo of Los del Río.

"I'm in a state of happiness that I think is abnormal for human beings," he admits. And understandably so. The Argentine is in Spain about to embark on his first solo European tour, having just spent a week in a tour van with his idol Manu Chao , and this weekend he accompanied his compatriot Gaspi as he entered the ring at La Velada del Año V at the Estadio de La Cartuja, performing his song Bar La Perla in front of some 80,000 people. "What Manu did was a complete surprise, and up until two weeks ago I didn't even know what La Velada was. The life of an artist is very pirate-like and buccaneering... until things go well for you."

Their musical approach defies labels, fusing traditionally sectarian genres in an unlikely marriage of cumbia, rock, and punk—the latter being one of their most important roots—that dares to cross the boundaries of the established. The result? A very dense and emotional cumbia that blends the rebajada style of Monterrey, Mexico, with the villera style of the Buenos Aires suburbs.

"There's a stigma attached to cumbia and punk, as if those two genres shouldn't intersect. They're like forbidden loves," he says. "But then it seemed to me that the most punk thing you could do was cross that line . There's no escaping cumbia; it's part of our DNA in Latin America. And there comes a time when it really pisses you off not understanding it as a musician. It has its own language, its own musical richness, and I said, 'I want to learn that.'"

And where does this passion for punk come from? we ask. "In Misiones, the city where I grew up, I had a neighbor, El Naipe, who was a crazy kid : he had tattoos, played the drums, and listened to punk," he says. "He gave me some cassettes that had The Clash, Die Toten Hosen, the Ramones. It was the coolest thing in the world, but it was also a music that let you be a part of it. It fits very well with the rebellion of a kid when you feel like the whole world is against you. It introduced me to a whole reality and a social conscience , and that's where I became very close to punk," explains Amores, who was already playing guitar and drums from an early age.

It's no surprise, then, that he soon began getting involved in bands. First came Euforia, which "lasted two rehearsals." Then, Anarquía, "with some friends when I was 13 or 14," and later, Cara Rota, "which was a little more serious." "Misiones was a good city to rehearse my dreams," says Amores, who later returned to his native Buenos Aires to study drums. There, he also joined Argies as a bassist, a band with which he traveled around the world and which would shape "his visceral approach to music."

His path changed, however, when he discovered the power of song as a narrative tool: "One day I heard Andrés Calamaro and I realized what it was like to write a song." In addition to Chao and Calamaro, his role models include Pete Doherty and Joaquín Sabina. "I really like the imagery of the singer, that singer who's half-poet, cursed, pirate, buccaneer," he says. "And all these guys take the profession of being a singer and the responsibility of being one very seriously, just like I do."

Between questions, he strums a few chords on the guitar resting in his lap. At one point, he starts playing "Bar La Perla ," and the waiter from the café leans out onto the terrace to listen. His rock aesthetic contrasts with the delicacy with which he plays the strings of his Gibson. And the tattoos that mark his skin are the ink with which his experiences are inscribed, from which the lyrics of his songs now spring.

It was in 2017 that he released his first solo album, UNO , followed by Chico Chico in 2019, an album that also saw him adopt that name as a new artistic identity. "When I started as a solo artist, I didn't want to put myself in my own skin, I wanted to be able to hide behind something," he admits. Chico Chico , he says, came from the name of a bar in a town in Corrientes, where he went to record the album. "We recorded in a wooden cabin, with the microphone hanging from the ceiling, next to the beach. After asking [the pagan saint] Gauchito Gil for inspiration upon entering town, that weekend, surrounded by friends, I wrote the entire album," he recalls. In the town there was "a seedy little bar called Chico Chico, and a friend came and said: 'Give the album that name.' And then they started calling me Chico Chico."

The album came out, and a year later, someone from the town contacted him to tell him that Chico Chico had actually been a person, now deceased. "His brother had opened the bar in his name. He was a fisherman, a guitarist, and very beloved in the town," he recalls. "They said his spirit was in the river where we wrote the songs."

But then it was time to take off the mask—there was a Brazilian artist with the same stage name—and introduce himself to the world as Ilan Amores, no matter how much he didn't want to: "I don't want to imagine that so many people might know me, because then you want to please everyone and be on good terms with everyone. And that's a very bad boat to get on."

Although he gained new followers this weekend, Amores isn't interested in sacrificing his essence for visibility. "I take responsibility for everything I've worked for to get to this point and not renounce it, while at the same time maintaining my essence and trying to be authentic," he says, with all his characteristic good vibes . "Cumbia accompanies me, cumbia takes care of me, and a tall ship will take me to a safe harbor."