Luis «Wicho» Yépez

From the first day, Wicho was the lead discjockey of the new name. He would remain so throughout his time at Hot Music, without exception.

Matching beats and bars

Wicho was one of the first discjockeys in the area to spin records matching the beats and the bars of every mix — locking two tracks by their pulse and not by ear alone. In a scene where most people were still chaining songs one after another, that technique was the difference between a selection and a set.

1984: the pairing with Enrique Rojas

From 1984, when the crew coming from Energía and Infierno Sweet joined the project, Wicho began to share the booth with Enrique Rojas. The pair signed the most remembered episode in the miniteca's history: two sound clashes won on the same weekend — Friday at the Círculo Militar in Ciudad Bolívar, Saturday in the Gran Salón of the Club Náutico Caroní — with three turntables running at once.

The sets by Yépez and Rojas from those nights are remembered both solo and as a duo, cheered by the judges and even more by the crowd.

Cool blood

Everyone who saw him work agrees on the same thing: nothing rattled him. It made no difference how complex the mix was or how big the event — a fifteenth-birthday party in a neighborhood hall or a guerra de minitecas with judges and thousands of people on top of him — Wicho spun with the same steady pulse. Enrique Rojas remembers him that way, and it is the first thing he mentions when he tells this story.

Hanging up the records

Between 1988 and 1989 he decided to retire and hand the baton to Abilio de Abreu, Hot Music's second owner. It was not a lone exit: he retired alongside Alfredo Pinto, with whom he had founded the miniteca. Enrique Rojas had left the scene a couple of years earlier, at the end of 1986, and it was precisely that departure that had opened the door to Abilio.

Today: Dinámica 95.5 FM

Wicho is today at the head of Dinámica 95.5 FM and has been part of the station's expansion towards the east of the country. It started out with a musical format running from the 70s to the 90s and has been adding more recent decades to its selection; he is the one who decides the musical direction.

Forty years after the booth in Manoa, the job is the same: choosing what plays.

Credits and sources

• · Based on the account of Enrique Rojas, associate discjockey of Hot Music and Luis “Wicho” Yépez's booth partner from 1984.
• · Entry for Miniteca Hot Music (collection “Minitecas: Mobile Power”) in the MiniTK Archive — the 1980 merger at Club La Hostería, his standing as founder and lead discjockey, and the two 1984 sound clashes.
• · Entry for Enrique Rojas (collection “One Mixshow, One Name”) in the MiniTK Archive — the 1984 alliance, the three simultaneous turntables and his retirement at the end of 1986.
• · Entry for Alfredo Pinto (collection “Hidden Figures”) in the MiniTK Archive — Hot Star, the founding merger and his stay until the end of the 80s.