Classy with Jonathan Menjivar · Pineapple Street Studios and Audacy

Introducing: This Is Uncomfortable

March 7, 2024·37 min·3 clips

Kashi finds videos of thousands in Hong Kong protesting with his song as their rallying cry.

Host Rima Kres introduces Kashi Keegan, who grew up in Worthing, a retirement town on England's southern coast, dreaming of being a recording artist like George Michael or Elton John. Kashi was a lonely child who wrote poetry from a young age, got piano lessons his mother arranged affordably, and attended music college. He recorded music in a converted toilet studio called the Loophole at around $50 per hour, with each song taking 12 or more hours. His father — a postman who was Kashi's main champion — drove him to and from recording sessions. By his mid-twenties, Kashi had spent over £60,000 and had never earned a cent from music. He set himself a deadline: if he didn't have a break by age 25, he would quit. Nearing that deadline in 2008, he sat on the floor with his keyboard one night and wrote 'This Is My Dream' in a moment of raw anger and frustration. His father heard the demo and said it was the one. It was uploaded to ReverbNation and met with silence. Kashi also discovered around this time that he had Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a neurological condition affecting his gait. He had noticed people staring at his walk for years and was mocked during a performance for walking like an ostrich. On his 25th birthday, he quit music and became a journalist, commuting four hours a day to London. Four years later, in 2012, he received an email from ReverbNation: Universal Music Publishing in Hong Kong wanted 'This Is My Dream' as the theme for a reality game show on HKTV. The network paid him about $5,000. Then in 2013, Hong Kong's government denied HKTV its broadcast license, which protesters viewed as Beijing encroaching on civil liberties. Kashi's song became the protest anthem, played to tens of thousands of demonstrators. He was invited to perform, flew out two days later, and sang to 30,000 people at Hong Kong's Civic Square. The song hit number one on Hong Kong's iTunes chart. Kashi lost his journalism job after the performance and moved to Hong Kong for three months on a self-imposed record-deal deadline. With help from Eva — a fan who later became his wife — he secured one record deal, but the song's political associations caused radio stations to refuse to play his music. He never made it as a sustained artist. The money from the record deal and iTunes royalties was enough to break even on everything he'd spent. Kashi still lives in Hong Kong with Eva and works as a journalist.

As heard by us

An aspiring pop star's stalled dream returns through an unexpected email and a Hong Kong protest.

The episode tracks Kashi Keegan, an aspiring pop star who put his money and time into music, set a deadline, and left it behind when it did not pay off.

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Why you'd press play

When an aspiring pop dream resurfaces in Hong Kong protest videos, you get a story with a real-world surprise.

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