Holiday

It innovated on the equipment front as well. At the end of the 80s it added to the rig a Yamaha electronic drum machine and a sampler keyboard —with barely a few seconds of recording and a single memory— on top of the delay most crews were already using. Over the years, the miniteca leaned more and more toward sound and automated lighting, keeping itself at the cutting edge.

Booth and voices

Through Holiday's booth, during the 80s and 90s, passed a large group of discjockeys:

• · José Juan “el Dientón”
• · José Luis Viches “Cheli” (R.I.P.)
• · Heider Hernández
• · Frank González “Arepa”
• · Iván Rojas “Peluretro”
• · Manzul Rivas
• · Daniel Max
• · Cristian Rojas
• · Mauricio Gómez
• · Elkin Zambrano
• · Miguel Narza
• · Leonel Rojas

Sound clashes and tours

Holiday traveled most of the towns and cities from the Brazilian border to Puerto La Cruz, and played at the openings of discotheques and nightspots such as Parranda, Extras, Imperio and Coyote, among others.

On the sound clash circuit it measured itself against heavyweight names of the period: 350, Kamelot, Poison, Lágrima, Fuga, Sono Power, Hot Way, Thee Line and Hallo Way, among others. It was also present at numerous beach and river festivals.

Legacy

One of the most remembered chapters of Holiday is its part in the carnivals of El Callao. According to the magazine, it was one of the first minitecas to play there as a miniteca —three years running— at a time when only sound systems for the bands and carts for the comparsas were allowed.

The outfit is still active, devoted more and more to sound and automated lighting, faithful to the pioneering calling with which that family project of 1987 started out.

MiniTK Archive notes

Confirmed founders: the brothers Leonel Rojas and Iván Rojas “Peluretro” are co-founders and discjockeys of Holiday. Iván is still active on the scene —part of the “clan rumbero”— and was interviewed by Melón TV as one of the most respected minitequeros in Venezuela.

Note on shared names: the Leonel Rojas of Holiday (Ciudad Guayana) is not the same Leonel Rojas whose career took in The Drop and Betelgeuse (Caracas) — they are two different men with the same name, each with his own story in the MiniTK Archive.

Social media

• · Social media and contact: still being traced — do you have information? Write to us through the contact form

Credits and sources

• · Story based on “La Revista de las Minitecas” (DJ Vladimir Medina edition), p. 32.
• · Waldemaro Martínez as a voice/jingle of the miniteca circuit: confirmed by multiple independent records (tiktok.com/@minitecastv; community references).
• · Carnaval de El Callao as a living tradition with a structure of sound systems and comparsas: UNESCO — Intangible Cultural Heritage (ich.unesco.org/es/RL/el-carnaval-de-el-callao-representacion-festiva-de-una-memoria-e-identidad-cultural-01198) and Wikipedia (es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnaval_de_El_Callao).
• · Pending documentary verification: the exact founding date (25/02/1987), the Rojas brothers' ownership and Holiday's specific participation in El Callao (three years running) — with no independent external corroboration so far.