Blacka Di Danca on Releasing Music, Dancing And Success As A Creative Entrepreneur
Blacka opened up about how this world is working through us, that we are all part of a purpose much greater than ourselves. When you pursue your dreams, it’s not the saying of you’ll never work a day in your life. It really is a lot of work, but the work is a lot more worth it. This whole pursuit is far bigger than us, than Blacka. Our goals, our purpose is bigger than ourselves.
He talks about the cliche of a dancer when asked how long they’ve been doing it being their “whole life”. But, in his case this is very much the case. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York he was always raised on that Carribean culture of dance and music. In fact his close family was a popular group called New Kingston. He tells the story of getting more formally into dance and how it too started young, but really lead to a life long journey of learning everything about the art form that brought him to incredible places of success.
Even though he was the breadwinner for the family, he shares how he made the tough decision to chase his dreams. The decision was made easier as he realized how much he hated the idea of living with regret and that he at least wanted to know that he had true answers as to whether it was possible to make a living doing what he loved. This is the key to chasing our big dreams.
Blacka is a very philosophical leader in the creative and social media space whether he fully recognizes it or not. We talked about how poetic his responses can be. We also discussed how time does not truly exist and the fact that perfection is death. He shared that life goals are not about doing things perfect. Rather we should do things with integrity, and adjust up as we improve.
Blacka really truly is a team player, which is evidenced by his NFT company as well. In many ways it is built around giving back. He does this by providing practical projects to companies who may be new to Web 3. For example, their venture Non-Fungible Tampons is geared toward alleviating the challenges people face around period poverty.
Blacka started to realize the time, energy and resources he put into helping other artists succeed, even though it was fun, didn’t come back to him as the dancer, or choreographer. So, because he grew up around music as well, he began publishing his own music., so royalties from the music itself could support his career too. Since he already had fans all over the world, the success of his records came pretty quickly. The buss down challenge that came from one of his records became viral and people were balancing things on their heads to his music. He shares how a challenge like this can really ignite the sharing of music, and bring together a community of supporters.
There was so much packed into this episode it’s hard to summarize. For example Blacka even has his own shoe line, so we talked about how to get started in that industry too. Dealing with adversity and seeing the upside to struggles was a big part of us covering his recent struggles with post concussion syndrome and having to take some time off from his passions. We got into lifelong learning, as well as goals we have for the future and why we do what we do.
Memorable Quotes
“Perfection is death”
“Life is just about networking and meeting people”
“There is no I in Team, no matter if you spell it forward or backward."
Key To Marketing Your Brand
- Identify your brand tones and when you want to use them. Know when to be serious, sympathetic, comedic or teach.
- Be aware of how you want to come across and how your audience is perceiving your message.
- Know your brands “why”, what is your mission and purpose?
- Know what value people gain from supporting your brand, what does your community get?
- Think of your brand as something you want to see in every grocery store, if it’s digital, you should aim to be able to see it all over the internet.
- Don’t get too hung up on supply and demand, or trends. Always be your authentic self. We shouldn’t be having to act on, and off when building a brand, everything builds through you, so be sure it’s sustainable.
How To Succeed As A Musician
- Interact with the audience that you want to build before you release the music.
- As you build a community, involve them in the construction of songs, art and have them looking forward to upcoming music.
- Give, give, give, give, give and then release music and seek support.
- Don’t underestimate the art work of music. Create artwork for your single thinking about how it speaks to your brand values and that particular track.
- If you’re able to create video, adding that can really increase the interest and shareability of your audience, so find ways to create videos to accompany your music.
- Engage your audience by increasing emotion and attracting their senses, ears hearing great tunes, eyes seeing good visuals, heart holding nice feelings.
- Build your community by getting down into the trenches with your fans, off the stage and into the audience, build connection and trust by scaling the unscaleable of commenting back, having discussions and providing them with opportunities to connect to you.
- Release your music, and then make and release some more.
Memorable Quotes
“Sometimes you just have to jump without a parachute and figure it out along the way, especially for young people.”
“I just like doing what's fun in life. This is literally your life. If you're working at a job that you don't like you could just quit and get another one. It's not that hard, but people make it hard on themselves, they create these mental roadblocks.”
“I kind of worry for some people that get enticed by the idea of making money in the NFT space, rushing into things, focusing on money, and not worrying about passwords, or security.”
Guest Bio
Blacka Di Danca is an American artist, actor and choreographer. He tours regularly all around the world. Blacka's talent has led to work with some of the top names in the music industry. He has choreographed and been featured in music videos for Major Lazer, Rvssian, J Balvin, Farruko, Shenseea, Tyga, Janet Jackson, Nicky Jam, Anuel AA, Rihanna, Cardi B, El Alfa, Drake, A$AP Rocky, and Davido.
Blacka was featured in The New York Times, The Jamaica Star, The Jamaica Gleaner, The Source magazine and has appeared on BET, MTV, Fuse TV and CBS TV. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Blacka grew up in a Caribbean household in Crown Heights. Dancehall, reggae, soca and calypso music has always been a part of his life.
In 2003, he discovered Passa Passa Dance Festival from Kingston, Jamaica. Since then Blacka partied nightly in local clubs and street events through Brooklyn building a name for himself. In early 2008, he was booked for the first time to perform professionally in Virginia.
In 2011, Blacka left his full-time job as a doorman at Columbia University to further pursue his dreams. He began travelling the world performing and teaching choreography and spreading dance hall culture.
Since 2016, Blacka announced a new partnership with Red Bull, starting released his own music and bridging his skills into Web3 and the NFT space.
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