“The thing that makes all DJs different from one another is that they put who they are into their music. You get to feel a little piece of their soul for the hour or so they’re on the ones and twos.” Photo by Tom Brayne.

Two Turntables and a Mouthstick: DJ $hortness


"The thing that makes all DJs different from one another is that they put who they are into their music. You get to feel a little piece of their soul for the hour or so they're on the ones and twos."
“The thing that makes all DJs different from one another is that they put who they are into their music. You get to feel a little piece of their soul for the hour or so they’re on the ones and twos.” Photo by Tom Brayne.

The DJing world — a “boyz club” full of young, sexy and usually nondisabled men — is the last place you’d expect to find the redheaded, pierced and tattooed wheelchair-user phenomenon: her eminence DJ $hortness, Michigan’s hottest female DJ and self-described amazing dancer. Sexuality, passion and unretreating fight are just some of the traits that make up the aura surrounding her. From her childhood in the “system” to breaking free and discovering the rave scene of the late ’90s, DJ $hortness (a.k.a. Rynita McGuire) is a 28-year-old woman determined to become one of the biggest DJ’s in the country. She’s been on a mission to prove to the world that no one, no matter how they look, is ever what you think.

Baby Shorte
Born in 1977 in Kalamazoo, Mich., $hortness came into the world with arthrogryposis. “It’s a rare disability that makes the joints in my arms and legs really stiff,” she says. “The muscles in my arms and legs are somewhat underdeveloped, giving me some of the traits of a quadriplegic without any loss of sensation. The grip in my hands is very weak so I use my mouth for a lot of things, such as painting, writing and DJing.”

$hortness was also born to a mother whose life was too complicated to finish the job raising her. “My mom was very young and a little wild when I was born. She took care of me as long as she could, but after a while she decided she couldn’t handle being a caregiver all the time. She needed to get herself together. I was put in foster care at about age 11. From that moment on I was a child of the system.”

Before she and her mother began their separate life paths, $hortness was introduced to music by her mom. “I’ve been into music my whole life,” she says. “My mom plays guitar, and I started singing with her at a very early age.” This musical introduction spurred $hortness to explore further how she could express herself through music. “I always wanted to be a singer in a band or in the music industry in some capacity. When I was about 7, I got my first tape-deck boom box. I started making mix tapes of my favorite songs from the radio. I even mixed the tracks or put them in a set-list order to convey a message of my feelings at the moment.” The seeds of $hortness’s future DJ-dom had been planted.

“So I guess I knew exactly what I wanted to do around age 7. At the time I thought I wanted to be a radio DJ,” she says. “I was really young and wasn’t sure I could reach everything, so I chucked it up as another crazy fantasy. I also wanted to be a skateboarder or a gymnast, but being born with the inability to walk kind of made these things almost impossible,” she laughs.

The edginess that is now so visible in $hortness’ persona grew from her unrelenting desire as a girl to prove she was no wilting flower. “Despite my disability, I’ve lived my entire life like any other hard core chick. I did everything all the other kids did. Sometimes I think I pushed the envelope even further in an effort to prove I was just as tough as or tougher than anyone gave me credit for.”

But after her mom left, the music stopped for $hortness. Her life became a hellish, impossibly controlled existence, she says. “I had so many case workers and therapists I felt like I couldn’t breathe without permission. This was ridiculous because I was perfectly capable of living a normal life.”

Spinning Solo
Once $hortness became a teenager, she was ready to break free of her foster care chains. As is natural — and in keeping with the expected whimsy of many teens — she decided it was time for some serious revolting. “When I was 17 years old, as an act of rebellion against the system and to gain my freedom and independence as a capable young woman, I packed up and moved to San Diego all by myself on a Greyhound bus.”

The disability-friendly environment of Southern California proved to be just what she needed. “In San Diego I finally found the freedom and independence to be the person I wanted and needed to be. I had my own place, unlimited public transportation possibilities, and lots of open, chill and helpful friends,” she says. “I got into the club rave scene big time. I started hanging out with the local DJs and dance crews every day. I was finally free and partying it up like any kid in their late teens/early 20s.”

But $hortness was still a bystander at this point: a partaker in the festivities. She knew the right people, was a fixture in the scene but had yet to realize her own dream. The mechanics of how she’d spin was a serious blockade. And then an interesting thing came to pass: $hortness got engaged.

“In 1999, at the ripe old age of 21, I became engaged to a military man who just got out of the Navy. I decided to move back home. I had a new life, a new man, and I was ready to come back as an independent woman and live my life. Shortly after I returned home, however, the engagement was off. I guess I was too cool for him,” she jokes. “And I’m not disappointed in the slightest anymore. I found the local club scene here and made new friends.”

One of the new friends she made in the Michigan club scene was Dave Albers. “He was just starting to DJ. One day he came over with a brand new set of turntables still in the box. He set them up at my house on a table so I could reach them. Then he showed me what buttons did what, gave me a handful of records, and left. Dave knew that leaving it in the room — something I was obviously interested in — would make me want to try.” And he was right.

“That night I played on his turntables all night. I didn’t sleep a wink. I used a wooden kitchen spoon in my mouth to turn on the lights and other things in my house that I can’t reach. I could use it to reach all the buttons and knobs that were out of reach for me. It was so exciting! I was doing the very thing I dreamed of doing at age 7, but even cooler than a radio DJ because I was using turntables.”

Now — fast-forward a few years — $hortness is an experienced “turntableist” working her butt off in the cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world of DJing.

Hey Sister DJ, Put a Record On …
In her own words, DJ $hortness spins some of the phattest electronic music in some of the hottest places in the country. “I have completely stepped outside of the ‘disability’ box and am now doing something totally hard core. I’m fulfilling my childhood dreams.” She usually spins a mix of house music and break beats and plays clubs and raves all over the Midwest. “I would really like to play further west, the South and eventually overseas,” she says.

“My sound palette has a very sexual sound,” she adds. “A club owner was approached about possibly booking me and said that he’d like to book me, but I’m too sexual and it makes him uncomfortable to think of a ‘little girl’ in a wheelchair as a sexual being. I’m not a little girl in a wheelchair,” she bristles. “I’m a woman who happens to use a wheelchair. I’m also attractive and for goodness sake I have desires. The thing that makes all DJs different from one another is that they put who they are into their music. You get to feel a little piece of their soul for the hour or so they’re on the ones and twos. My sexuality is a big piece of my soul. I’m a lover.”

She’s come a long way since her days of spinning with a wooden spoon. “I use a bendable typing wand mouthstick that I ordered from a rehab catalog. The wooden spoon was a good springboard, but it just slid across the records. The mouthstick has a rubber tip so I can back cue, scratch and torque the records. It grips the records much better, too. If you can’t do any of these things, you can’t spin vinyl.”

"Fighting for respect as a DJ has been a million times harder than growing up disabled or anything else I have ever done."
“Fighting for respect as a DJ has been a million times harder than growing up disabled or anything else I have ever done.”

“I also have a special turntable stand that my buddy Benjamin Paul custom made for me. It’s awesome. It sets my turntables even closer to my hands so I can use them and my mouth together. This significantly improved my skills almost immediately,” she says. “And I trained myself how to grab the vinyl with my teeth, very carefully, on the edge where there’s no music, so I don’t damage the tracks. You wouldn’t believe how many records I cracked in my mouth the first year trying to work it all out.” As for being a female DJ, on top of having a disability, $hortness says this “boyz club” is hard to break. “Being a woman and a DJ is hard enough for starters. Boys don’t generally like it when a girl can spin ‘boy muzic’ better than boys can. The really hard-headed ones won’t even admit you’re that good. They always find a flaw to challenge. Having a disability makes it even harder. People who haven’t even seen you play start acting like experts and talking about how bad you suck or how no one wants to say you suck because they feel sorry for you. Fighting for respect as a DJ has been a million times harder than growing up disabled or anything else I have ever done.”

$hortness has also learned that the DJ industry, to be blunt, is incredibly shady. She gets paid everything from “really well” to nothing at all. “Sometimes shady promoters try not to pay me. I bring in a large crowd and make them a lot of money. They need to respect the musicians that bring their party to life,” she laments. Club accessibility has also been an adventure. “Almost every club and venue I’ve ever played is far from wheelchair accessible. I’ve been carried up flights of stairs and fire escapes, power chair and all. And every stage I’ve ever played on has had stairs,” she adds. “I’ve had to do acrobatics to go to the bathroom sometimes. I’ve even been duct taped to bar stools because my chair wouldn’t fit in the DJ booth and the decks inside were set-up 5 feet or more off the ground. No room for my chair.” To date, $hortness has had some amazing experiences, such as spinning in front of 1.5 million people at the largest free music festival in the world — the Detroit Electronic Music Festival.

“DJing to me is the ultimate form of self expression,” she says. “Music and creating things are deep in my soul. I love sharing a part of me with the world. When I’m up there doing my thing, I’m more than that girl in the wheelchair. I’m a frickin’ human being with talent passion and emotion. I make people stop and think.”

“This is defiantly a hard core job for a hard core girl: Go Big or Go Home.”


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