DJ KashMatic launches GoFundMe to attend dream college
Published:Tuesday | December 28, 2021 | 12:10 AMSade Gardner/Staff Reporter
“When I reach this goal and complete my degree, it’s going to feel like mi a everybody son cause dem help me,” an exuberant DJ KashMatic told The Gleaner.
The 23-year-old created a GoFundMe account on the weekend to help with raising CAD$25,000 to secure his placement for the 2022 fall semester at Trebas Institute in Canada. DJ KashMatic saw his letter of acceptance to study audio engineering and production/DJ arts on Christmas Eve, a moment he has dreamed of since 2016.
“I always wanted to be an audio engineer because I love computers,” he said. “I wanted to be a computer engineer at first, but when I found out about audio engineering, I wondered if you could put the two of them together, only to understand that audio engineering is a big, whole thing.”
DJ KashMatic, whose birth name is Kashani Wallace, grew up in a family home in Pembroke Hall, Kingston, where he was first introduced to music. He was a part of the choir at Pembroke Hall Primary School, which copped various awards at the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s (JCDC) Festival of the Performing Arts competition but said he grew more reserved with age. Discovering Virtual DJ in 2007, he immersed himself in the disc jockey world and earned his moniker while attending Excelsior High School. But he was always thinking ahead, not just for himself, but for his family.
“When I got closer to CSEC, I said what will I do? As a DJ, there’s really not a lot of programmes out here to do, so yuh haffi go do something else, and I thought about audio engineering… I’m the only child for my mother, so you can understand that when that time comes when my mother is unable to do anything more, I have to step up for her. To be real, I always wanted to do that but not in the traditional way. I don’t want to sit down in front of a boss, and that doesn’t mean I won’t be working for someone, but the creative mind needs to constantly be stimulated.”
He went on to do Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination and Pre-University School and set forth to apply for Trebas Institute but thought, “I have no money.”
Determined to be degree-qualified, he opted to pursue entertainment and cultural enterprise management at The University of the West Indies, Mona, but withdrew in December 2019 because of its non-alignment with his vision. Then came COVID-19. The period saw DJ Kashmatic rising to prominence through his involvement with the successful Big Par Online series, which paved the way for him to play at Dream Weekend and FOF. But something was still missing.
“I thought, ‘you’ve already proven yourself to who definitely needs to see you prove yourself because you’ve worked with so many big brands; you, yourself, are a big brand at this point, based on the work you’ve done and you can be bigger, but you need to get certified in something’, so I applied for the programme.”
He’s received more than CAD$800 since using the crowdfunding platform and is equally grateful and optimistic.
“I wouldn’t say I like putting myself out there to ask for help, but when you need help, you need help. There are multiple people who have come to me during this COVID period to tell me that [my] playing saved their lives. A lot of people were in complete distress, a lot of people didn’t know how they were going to make it through, but because of Big Par Online and KashMatic being on it and getting the opportunity to show my skill set, I definitely saved lives.”
Through the pursuit and completion of the programme, he hopes to “show people if you believe in yourself, you can do whatever you want to do… A lot of people will second-guess you, even those close to you, but as long as you don’t second-guess yourself, you can carry anything you want across the seas.”