Bio
The measure of a DJ lies not in what records he plays, but in the manner in which he plays those records. Case in point, Domingo Yu. There has never been anything conventional about him.
Born to a Taiwanese woman and a Mexican-American soldier, he spent the first part of his life moving from one military base to another. While traveling across the globe with his family he was very much aware of his being an American, yet the realities of everyday American life was as foreign as could be imagined. Young Domingo yearned to experience his country first hand as an All-American kid. He got his wish as a teen when his family ended up in Alabama and he joined the football team.
And if that was who Domingo was, the story would end here. But it wasn't.
Alabama's "All-American" lifestyle was not quite what he had imagined. "It was this whole other world I was unaware of. Living in Alabama, there is a white world and a black world." While he was neither, he gravitated towards the black one, intrigued by the sounds of the emerging hip hop scene. This wasn't like anything he had heard in his travels, a sound that he was unfamiliar with. It was something new. Or maybe it was just part of being a teenager, being antiauthoritarian. Or was it something else? He was beginning to understand that the All-American lifestyle he had envisioned was more fantasy than anything else. It had inspired him when he needed it. Hip hop's references to all things New York, from the boroughs, to the 5 Percenters, to Malcolm X, was giving him new inspiration. Now the music had a function in his life beyond simple entertainment. Music became an almost educational pursuit. "It parallels reading books, because books take you to a different world, you're somewhere else. I think music does the same thing."
His family moved to California and again, Domingo found himself not fitting in. While he had done his best to catch the latest sounds in Alabama, the folks in Cali weren't having it. In their eyes, "I was late, I was slow, I was country." That didn't stop him. He began buying records. Mind you, he was not spinning. He just knew that one day...
Bio is used courtesy of Urban Slang Records, Detroit, MI
