Dave Curry, better known as Black Dave, is one of the loudest voices in the NFT space. He is an advocate for diversity both from a racial identity standpoint as well as gender. Wherever NFTs are being discussed, Black Dave isn’t far. But, he’s also an artist and musician in is own right. This week The BlkChain speaks with Black Dave about his work. We also discuss the present and future of the NFT’s.
I love the name Black Dave. Where did the name come from? How did you get it?
I feel like this is sort of simple, but it comes from me being from a place where there are a lot of people named Dave who aren’t black. When people would call my friends as a kid, they would describe me as “Black Dave who skateboards” or “Black Dave who plays in a band” or “Black Dave from English class” or whatever and it eventually got shortened to Black Dave. There are a handful of people who think they specifically gave me the name Black Dave but I think it naturally just came to be over time. My name is actually Davone, pronounced Dave-On, so it was never the same name as my counterparts anyway.
You’re based in Charleston, SC. What’s the scene like there for a Black man who is into Anime? Is there a large community there?
Charleston is an interesting place because it’s actually sort of devoid of artistic culture. Anime, as a whole, wasn’t that accepted or very cool until recent years, so you were a nerd if you loved it, no matter where you were. In current years, for sure, anime is everywhere and people are willing to love it publicly. Where I live, I am known as someone who loves anime, but people think about me more in terms of music and what I do with that.
What about anime appeals to you?
To me, the best thing about anime is the depth of storytelling while still trying to be a bit fantastical. A lot of what I watch would actually make really great movies, or could be replicated in live action format – but for some reason never translates when remade. I think it covers a lot of deep topics and also makes a point to relate to the real world, and points out the flaws in humans and humanity. It just looks good. Nostalgia. So many things so many things.
When did you get on the Clubhouse app?
I got onto Clubhouse right after Thanksgiving, in 2020. I had told a friend about it in October and he got on immediately but it took a few weeks for me to be able to get on pretty quickly but it took a bit to build up the invites. Ironically, right before my friend’s invites were populated, a different friend invited me to the platform!
How has it changed since then?
When I first got onto Clubhouse, I was in the first hundred thousand or so people on the app and it was definitely a different place. Back then, I was trying to figure out how to make it as a music artist and producer, as a photographer and as a graphic designer. I had gotten on in the era where Atlanta rap music was running Clubhouse, which was a decent chunk of 2020 — and the point of Clubhouse was the possibility to rub shoulders with people with platforms while being able to simultaneously learn from them. I think since then, we’ve moved much more into individual and community building in a more lateral way than a vertical one. I like that. People also have been teaching and learning and becoming teachers and building their own lateral platforms – which I’m into. I think it’s become more about people empowering themselves much more than trying to grab onto a power structure.
I just wanna inspire Black kids who have lived a left of center or left of stereotypical lifestyle to recognize that they can be successful through being themselves.
~Black Dave
When did you first hear the term NFTs?
I heard about NFTs in early 2020, right before the pandemic, via a friend of mine who was pretty active on Nifty Gateway as a buyer and seller of NFTs. He was trying to get me on and into them at that time but I was so wrapped up in just trying to survive financially and the pandemic and stuff that I didn’t push into it. I was watching from the sidelines, just the way the work and money was moving and thought to myself “Oh, I don’t have enough money to get involved” and my friend, being a bit more of means, is sometimes hard to believe in how easy things are to get into because he has a bit of resource behind him. I feel like I typed a lot of sentence fragments, but let’s call this stream of consciousness haha.
How did CH accelerate your understanding of NFTs?
Clubhouse was the moment I realized getting into NFTs was something I could do without a mass of money. I think about how when I was younger and I was listening to the radio that you had to be like…a signed artist and have a record deal in order to go the studio or in order to put out a CD and stuff, and when I learned anyone could be in a band or be a rapper and put out CDs and stuff, the doors really opened up for me creatively. NFTs once I got onto Clubhouse were the same. Shouts out to Ameer’s 5 day NFT course he was doing back in December/January, that’s how I got on.
