East West - The Asian American Lifestyle Magazine

By Martha Hemenway

In the Los Angeles/Hollywood club scene, 27-year-old DJ Shy is garnering popularity for her turntable skills as a deejay, a female deejay. In just five years, DJ Shy has built herself a name in a male-dominated field, mixing for the likes of Missy Elliott, Ludacris, Heidi Klum and Bravo’s “Project Runway,” and the 2005 50 Cent and Eminem “Anger Management Tour,” among a smattering of other bookings. Between gigs, she also serves as an on-air mixer for Los Angeles’ 102.7 KISS-FM (home to Ryan Seacrest).

To friends, family and perhaps even herself, DJ Shy, however, is still small-town Karen Beck — with her catchy alias only a clue to the personality within. She isn’t exactly shy, but in an industry where show and extroversion are as plentiful as Starbucks, this music maven comes across as observant and cool. Not surprisingly, she has an intrinsic commitment to remain grounded (“no plastic surgery”) and value-driven while fueling a host of notable ambitions.

After securing a master’s in health-care administration from the University of Southern California, Beck puts this degree, along with a Pennsylvania State undergraduate finance degree, to meaningful use. By day, this deejay is a senior financial analyst for L.A. Care Health Plan, a nonprofit organization concerned with the state of health-care services available to the vulnerable, low-income population.

“There are so many uninsured people — it’s driving health-care costs really high,” Beck says of Los Angeles’ health-care system. “I thought, if I learn from the worst environment, everything else would seem easier.”

With the guidance of an admired hospital CEO and the materializing dreams of a once-naïve high school candy striper, Beck sounds content waking up for an office job she enjoys. There’s no denying, however, that sleep deprivation is an inescapable element of leading this double life. Four nights a week, bedtime nears 2 a.m. courtesy of her deejay alter ego’s allegiance to pleasing a groove-happy nightclub clientele.

The evolution of Beck’s music mixing practice, which incorporates a mélange of hip-hop, pop and old-school hits, began several years ago while she was a hostess at Hollywood’s Laugh Factory. A promoter was motivated to turn the club’s slowest night of business, Sunday, into “Chocolate Sundaes,” which caters to a mostly African American audience and comic lineup, according to Beck. Live deejay music soon entered the house, and although she had not witnessed it in a live format before, something clicked.

She purchased her first set of turntables in August 2001. Within about a year, Beck says she grasped the tricks of the trade: mix, spin and cut. However, she soon learned that in the club business, the audience rules the roost.

“You’ve got to know your crowd, who you’re playing for,” she says, with repeated emphasis on thoughtful song selection.

Last fall, Beck embarked on a solo tour of Asia, spinning in such faraway places as Shanghai, Bangkok and Beijing. As always, crowd reaction was key. Unlike Americans who typically rely on an alcohol buzz to let loose, Asian clubgoers on the dance floor “looked like they’d drank three cans of Red Bull!” she quips. Hip-hop, she says, is relatively new to that scene. The overseas experience was a first for her career. She is tentatively scheduled for a second tour in August.

Other firsts hover on the horizon. Beck is co-creator of a proposed reality TV show aimed to “push the awareness” of female deejays. If the concept is picked up by a major network, she plans to represent a double minority as its only Asian American cast member.

The daughter of Korean parents, Beck was raised outside Philadelphia amongst what was arguably an unusual community makeup for a non-Caucasian family, with Amish and Ku Klux Klan neighbors.

It was a “rough ’n’ tough” environment, Beck says, where she was sheltered from the “secrets” of racism. It wasn’t until high school that ethnic differences became more obvious. Yet there was little opportunity along the way to absorb her own Korean culture and language under the wing of a single mother who spoke broken English and worked long days away from home. Today, she seems somewhat removed from her heritage.

Beck is, however, immersed in the West Coast melting pot where culture often gets the best of us. Along with her TV show in the making, she also hopes to release a book about these diverse life experiences in the next year. She is currently working with an author who shares a common background as an Asian American woman from a single-family home, a fact that Beck finds appropriate for the topic.

And whether it is in days or in decades, as DJ Shy or Karen Beck, the protagonist’s future looks bright and, no doubt, extremely busy.

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