Mestre Gaivota, David Morgan, has been living and teaching arts for over thirty years. After training Tai Kwon Do as a child he took up Shotokan as a teenager. In college he began training Enshin which is a full contact style of karate. As a Black Belt in Enshin he competed in several bare-knuckle, knock down tournaments and placed as a finalist in all of them. He was first introduced to Capoeira, an Afro Brazilian Martial Art disguised as a dance, in Bahia in 1999 and began teaching classes at the NJ Capoeira Arts Center in 2003.

In 2006 Mestre Gaivota founded the Afro Brazilian Cultural Center of New Jersey currently located in West Orange, New Jersey. As the Director of the Center he is responsible for developing the curriculum used in classes at the Center and at the many After School Enrichment sites contracted by the Center. He teaches an Afro Brazilian Arts course on Capoeira in the Dance Departments of Montclair State University & at Rutgers New Brunswick, and in the Kinesiology Department of William Paterson University where he is an Adjunct Professor. ABCCNJ is very active in the community, performing in local events, providing presentations, residencies and After School Enrichment in schools and other venues in the area.