Mario Babbaro

Career

Mario Babbaro began his career as a discjockey (now DJ) in 1976, and in 1978 he founded his first miniteca, called Cream. His talent took him, in February 1981, onto the staff of Betelgeuse, where he worked as a discjockey and sound technician. The miniteca had just won the 1980 Guerra de Minitecas at the Poliedro —the sound clashes of the movement— and the victory had brought such an increase in bookings that it needed another discjockey: that is where he came in. His first event with the house was the election of the Carnival Queen at the Hotel Rasil in Puerto Ordaz.

As the commitments multiplied in Caracas and in the interior of the country, more cabinets had to be built to cover simultaneous contracts, and Babbaro also took charge of the technical side, the audio and the lighting, because one person alone could not rig every party. In 1983 the group bought the miniteca The Drop, and he split his time between the two to establish it; by then they already had four Betelgeuse cabinets and one from The Drop. In 1984 they bought Sandy Lane, and although he was not its discjockey, he did play parties with it now and then, and the technical work of keeping the whole operation in shape did fall to him —a hallmark of the group's minitecas—. Those years took him to stages of great importance, such as the miniteca shows at the Poliedro de Caracas.