DJ to be honored at day of celebration
June 28, 2023 - By Brittany Kelley
Pictured, DJ 2DQ is overcome with emotion as Austin Mayor Kirk Watson presents him with a proclamation declaring Aug. 31, 2023 as DJ 2DQ Day in Austin. Photo by Ashley Kontnier[/caption]
Tury Quinonez, also known as DJ 2DQ, a renowned DJ who resides in Kyle, will soon be presented with a proclamation by the city of Austin declaring Aug. 31 as “DJ 2DQ Day.”
Quinonez began his DJ career after listening to late night radio mix shows while on the night shift at Walmart in El Paso.
“I worked at Walmart, and I would listen to the DJs because I worked overnights, and they would have mix shows on the radio. I remember I told myself, ‘Someday I want to be that dude,’” said Quinonez.
Nights were spent deejaying in his bedroom and at small house parties until the young artist made the move to San Diego, where he took the opportunity to reinvent himself and take his passion more seriously. Here, he mastered the art of deejaying.
By the time Quinonez moved to Austin in the mid-’90s, he already had the talent, so he just needed to prove himself to the community. He spent his early days in the city opening for local DJs for free to get his name out and eventually graduated to booking his own shows at clubs and restaurants.
Now, 23 years into his professional DJ career, Quinonez plays three venues throughout the week in different cities to keep himself from being burnt out: The Railhouse Bar, in Kyle, Fridays and Sundays; Casa Moreno’s, in Austin, on Thursdays; and Besos Cocina & Cantina, in Round Rock, on Saturdays.
“Now, in Austin, for the most part, you could say ‘2DQ’ or ‘DJ 2DQ’ and it’s kind of a household name,” said Quinonez.
Aug. 31 will be proclaimed the inaugural DJ 2DQ Day at noon at Austin City Hall.
Though Quinonez’s career has continued over a decade, he has no plans to slow down anytime soon. He hopes to open up his own bar in the future and, maybe, have a bench in Kyle dedicated to him.
DJ 2DQ plays weekly at The Railhouse in Kyle, hosts a radio show on FM 95.9 and has an app titled “DJ2DQ,” where listeners can find a constant stream of his music 24 hours a day.
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Local publishing house inspires young writers
April 12, 2023 - By Megan Navarro
HAYS COUNTY — For most students, required writing in the classroom may not always be enjoyable. Therefore, a local publishing house and nonprofit is working to break the standard and promote literacy through poetry.
Infrarrealista Review was founded in 2020 by Cloud D. Cardona and Juania Sueños out of the Texas State MFA Creative Writing Program to highlight underrepresented Texan voices through a Hays County Youth Poet Laureate Program.
June Paddison was named the Hays County Youth Poet Laureate (YPL) with the manuscript, “To be a woman (not a girl).” The 17-year-old poet from San Marcos will receive a $1,000 cash prize, the YPL title for a calendar year and a chapbook publication through Plancha Press to be released on March 22, 2024.
Contestants prepared their portfolios by attending free virtual workshops, held in both English and Spanish, starting on Wednesday, April 26, taught by various poets: Cardona, Sueños, Bianca A. Perez and Anthony Issac Bradley. The workshops were held weekly on Wednesdays through June 30.
With the sponsorship of the Burdine Johnson Foundation, Cardona and Sueños created the workshops keeping in mind the things they would have wanted to learn during their educational career, as creative writing was not encouraged by instructors or parental figures as a viable or possible career option.
“It’s a curriculum built around getting these young students to explore their creative potential and take themselves seriously as an artist, specifically as a writer. Writing is typically an art that’s not encouraged to become a career for kids,” Sueños said. “It’s such a good outlet for them to get to know themselves better as well. The second aspect of the workshops that we do also involves a self-narrative. We ask the kids what sort of narratives they’ve created about themselves, maybe they are coming from external sources, that may not be so positive and then we challenge those things.”
“We do that by introducing them to artists from similar backgrounds, so they are able to see this near endless artist and have a role model that they can aspire to fill their careers in a similar way,” she added.
Sueños believes these workshops helped students in their regular classes.
“There’s a disconnect between what students are interested in and what is valued in the classroom. I think they have a real distinction between academia, or you know the academic realm, and art. I think that, hopefully, this can be a bridge for them to be more interested in their English classes because a lot of times, the high school and middle school curriculums are full of these very old texts that are part of the literary canon but that have been used and reused. These kids don’t have a deep connection to these texts,” Sueños said. “I think they tend to get a little bit frustrated or bored with the material … Hopefully, getting them to see that there’s a classroom environment for that sort of outlet for that specific creativity when it comes to writing will then transfer to their classrooms, where they can start to appreciate other kinds of writing like essays and reading texts in a different light.”
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