The disputed origin

Two ways of fitting a discotheque into a car

In the mid-sixties, a young man named Víctor Morín fell for the discotheques of Caracas: the music, the sound, the lights, the whole staging. In 1966 it occurred to him that all of that could be made smaller and taken somewhere else, and he gave the invention the prefix that would end up naming an entire movement: “mini”. The idea took its final shape on 6 January 1967 with Los Muertos Andantes, named that way after its fanaticism for “los muertos”.

The gear was homemade and unmistakable at the same time: Garrat turntables, a Philips deck, a Conan-brand tube power unit, a Samsun amplifier, two fifteen-inch bass speakers, a black light lamp, 150-watt floodlights, fluorescent posters — and a cabinet built to look like a coffin. The look was not decoration: it was half the show.

In those same years something just as improbable rolled through Caracas. “La Caravana” was, literally, a wagon: a faithful replica of the Wild West ones seen in the movies. Inside it carried what was needed to run a party —amplifier, turntable, deck— and a few whiskey barrels served as stands for the speakers. It belonged to Sebastián Battaglisi (hijo), and a period plaque kept in the Archive announces it with two words that back then were not yet a genre: “Discoteca Móvil”.

«There is, to this day, no documentary source that establishes which one rolled first. The Archive prefers to leave the question open rather than close it with a guess.»

Theming the sound before such a thing existed

What looks today like an eccentricity was, in fact, an idea ahead of its time. Decades later, the contest between minitecas would be decided as much by power as by looks: lettered cabinets, walls of lights, painted trucks, names turned into brands. A Wild West wagon playing music in El Paraíso, Santa Mónica, Montalbán, Bello Monte and Los Chaguaramos was one of the first times a sound system also had a visual concept.

Los Muertos Andantes did the same by another route: the black light, the fluorescent posters and the coffin gave the crew an identity that was recognizable at a glance, at a time when most rigs were simply boxes.

Seen together, the two tell the same thing from opposite ends: the movement was not born only out of playing music outside a discotheque, but out of turning the gear into a character.

And meanwhile, in Kingston

There is an irony worth not missing. While in Caracas a coffin and a wagon argued over which had got there first, the idea of taking the discotheque out into the street had already been working for more than a decade a thousand kilometers away.

In the Jamaica of the fifties and sixties, sound systems were the main form of popular entertainment, above all for those who could not afford the clubs of downtown Kingston. An operator rigged up enormous speakers, a selector chose the records and a host —the “toaster”— warmed up the crowd. Power, selection and a voice that rouses: exactly the same formula that, decades later and on its own, the miniteca movement would find.

There is no record that any of it reached Caracas as a direct influence; the Archive registers them as spiritual forerunners, not as teachers. But it puts the Venezuelan argument in its place: the question is not who invented mobile sound, but who made it their own here first. And that one is still unanswered.

What is settled, and what is not

It is worth separating two questions that tend to get mixed up, because only one of them has an answer.

Who gave it its name is documented: Víctor Morín is recognized as the man who coined the word “miniteca” in Venezuela, and he did so out of this project. That point is not in dispute.

Which one came first is another matter. There are those who hold that La Caravana was rolling even before Los Muertos Andantes. The first great wave of mobile discotheques is placed by some in the late sixties and by others well into the seventies, and to this day there is no documentary source that fixes the order with certainty. The MiniTK Archive registers that debate as open, and so it will remain until the proof turns up.

The entry for Los Muertos Andantes, written from the movement's own account, names them both: it recognizes Morín's crew and the wagon as pioneers of the road that Betelgeuse, Infierno, Sandy Lane, ZC or Tridimensión would later travel.

What became of each

Los Muertos Andantes moved. In 1974 they reached Isla de Margarita and brought in salsa and Caribbean and Anglo rhythms alongside their light show, at a time when the jukeboxes of the area sounded like ranchera and vallenato. With Margarita as their base they came to amass more than thirty thousand vinyl records and hundreds of honors, and their sound —with the coffin cabinet up front— was also heard in Brazil and Colombia. They still play on the island and at special appearances today.

Of La Caravana less remains, but what remains is the essential. It appears on the bill of the Segunda Guerra del Poliedro, on 7 December 1979 —the first guerra de minitecas of national scope—, alongside Saturno, T-Connection, Betelgeuse, Music Factory, Explosión, Lechuga's People, Savannah and Crazy Full. Explosión won that night, with Betelgeuse second and Lechuga's People third; there is no record of the wagon reaching the podium. Twelve years after it started, it was still in the fight.

What is missing

For La Caravana, the exact year of its founding, its discjockeys (now DJs) and the detail of its gear remain unconfirmed. No visual material survives from the founding stage of either one: the photographs that exist of Los Muertos Andantes are from the eighties, and of the wagon what survives is the wagon itself and its plaque.

If anyone keeps a dated photograph, a press clipping, a card or a contract from those first years, there is the piece that would settle the argument. Until then, the Archive prefers an honest question to a comfortable answer.

Links

• Entry: Miniteca Los Muertos Andantes
• Entry: Miniteca La Caravana
• The full story: Evolution of a Culture