 Dance
music DJs are often seen (with some justification) as
20-something, sunlight-deprived white males who lurk in record
store basements and dark, smoky nightclubs obsessing over the
latest unreleased 12” or ‘that hot rare groove track Amon
Tobin dropped last night!’. Not so for New York City DJ, Miss
Bliss, who not only sports a healthy tan, but is also, as her
name suggests, female.
Part Polish and part Chinese, Miss Bliss, known to her friends
and family as Cara Chan Wollinsky, has successfully defied the
pimply, vinyl-addict stereotype and is also making an impact
in clubs at home and abroad playing her favored genre of dance
music, an underground sound known as breakbeat, which contains
elements of funk, electro and hip-hop played to a syncopated
broken beat.
The good-looking, pint-sized 23-year-old has established
herself as a champion of the underground breakbeat scene and
used to run two popular club nights in the East Village,
called Sunday School and Big Apple Breaks. She has also played
in many of the city’s biggest clubs alongside international
DJs like revered house music guru Satoshi Tomiie and
award-winning breakbeat DJ Krafty Kuts from the UK.
When asked if her rise to the top of New York City’s nascent
breakbeat scene had been marred by sexism in a notoriously
male-dominated industry, her reply was typically
straightforward and clear-minded.
“No, if anything it’s probably easier (for female DJs). I
mean, guy DJs are dime a dozen and there’s not as many girl
DJs. So, people will notice you over someone else. [Female
DJs] definitely have an advantage.
“I mean, I’m a girl, I’ve played at all-girl parties and stuff
like that, so I won’t turn [bookings] down. It’s money,
whatever. But I’m not down with like, playing with no shirt on
and stuff.
“Different people approach it in different ways, it’s just not
my way of approaching it and I’m not trying to diss some
people who wanna dress in crazy outfits and juggle fire or
whatever, you know, it’s cool, do it! I just don’t want to,”
she said over a plate of spring rolls and a large glass of
Taiwanese milk tea at an East Village café.
Although her gender ultimately didn’t hinder her from playing
with the big boys, she faced another challenge that was, and
remains, altogether more daunting: parental disapproval. What
does her Hong Kong-born mother, a Chinese text translator at
the United Nations, have to say about her current vocation?
“My mother isn’t thrilled with the idea that I’m a DJ. She
tells me to get a job.
“My parents never wanted me to do [DJing]. When I was in high
school and I started going to Konkrete Jungle (a legendary
Drum n Bass club night), I was like 16 or 17 yrs old, and it
was a 16 and over club on a Monday night.
“It was 10 bucks to get in or eight bucks with the flyer... of
course I always got the flyer, save my two dollars! But it was
on a Monday night, so every night there’d be a big fight in my
house like: “I’m going out!”, “No you’re not!”, “Yes I am!”
and Bang! Close the door and run out,” she said with a laugh.
 But
her parents’ displeasure was not always so easily deflected.
She gleefully recounted an incident when her late father, who
was a lawyer, followed her all the way from their home in
Midtown Manhattan to a notorious club called Vinyl (now
re-named Arc) on the Lower West Side.
“It was on a Tuesday night, my dad was like ‘you can’t go’…
I’m like ‘I’m going’, so he said ‘fine, then I’m coming with
you’.
“So he came but he was like five people behind me in the line
‘cos I didn’t want to be seen with him you know… I was so
embarrassed!
“[Then] they totally dissed him at the door, they wouldn’t let
him in! I dunno maybe they thought he was an undercover cop or
something!” she said.
Despite the fact that she grew up in Manhattan, a city widely
regarded as a global dance music capital, Cara first laid a
needle to the groove in the more unassuming town of Claremont,
California, while she was an undergraduate at Pomona College
earning a degree in anthropology. There, she cultivated her
skills and adopted her current moniker because of the “happy
music” she played then.
These days, the self-confessed “girly-girl” favors breakbeats
from the tougher, harder, end of the spectrum, as opposed to
the more uplifting tunes known as ‘Florida breaks’ she played
in college. Her current sound has won her rave reviews in
magazines like Time Out! and club bookings all over the US,
Canada, Brazil and Argentina.
She’s been traveling every month for at least a week since
last August and is currently playing in Hong Kong and China
before returning home for a rest and then embarking on a
month-long tour of Europe in April. The jetset lifestyle can
have its perks, but it’s also been the source of some
hilarious, if rather unusual situations.
“I had to take a Greyhound down to Cleveland (for a
performance) because it was too last minute and the bus out
there was like nine hours… so, gee, that sucks!
“(At the party) someone said that outside on the patio, there
was this DJ playing topless. I was like what? I mean… this is
an all-girl party so that’s pretty lame. Why would u hire a DJ
to play topless?
“It turns out that she was actually a stripper who had no idea
how to DJ... she was just faking to a CD with two records and
kind of like… uhhhh [makes cueing motion with hands]
“Apparently she was so cold outside - well she wasn’t playing
naked, she had her pants on I think - but she was still cold.
Anyway she didn’t want to do it anymore, she wanted to go back
inside, and then they were like ‘Cara, can u replace the DJ
playing outside?’” she said.
She ended up replacing the topless DJ, but retained her
integrity – and clothing – by playing a trademark set of
tough, pounding breakbeats.
 Strippers
moonlighting as DJs aside, she admits that her job can at
times be trying on a personal level: “I think the hardest
thing about the whole DJing thing for me is the fact that none
of my friends are really into it, so I’m kind of doing it by
myself.
“Like my best friend Julia, we used to go out and party a lot,
but now she’s not into it anymore, so it’s hard, like, I don’t
really have anyone to ask ‘how do you do this’ and ‘how to do
that’… I don’t really have anyone looking over me, I’m not
really like in a ‘crew’ with my ‘inseparable buddies’... I’m
just kinda like by myself.”
But she finds the camaraderie and kinship so sorely lacking in
her nightlife forays in another hobby, the slightly less
glamorous pastime of… knitting.
“I knit I guess, but not that much… I’ve been learning how.
It’s what me and a few friends do like once a month. Just get
together and knit. I think we do it because we think its funny
than like we really, really, wanna knit,” she said without a
trace of embarrassment.
Indeed, with a dynamite combination of knitting, international
travel and some of the meanest breakbeats this side of the
Hudson, Miss Bliss looks like she’s set to continue pushing
breaks as far as she can.
-joon
-thanx to Cara for the interview!
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