One of the world’s most renowned drummers might never have found his destiny if The Salvation Army hadn’t provided his family with Christmas presents.
“If it were not for The Salvation Army, we never would have had a happy Christmas,” says Zoro (his full legal name), an internationally known rock star who grew up poor in South Central Los Angeles. “All of our toys came from The Salvation Army because we didn’t have any money. I was amazed that the things [my mother] wrote down, they actually brought.”
Zoro’s mother, Maria, raised him and his six siblings. He says his family was “raggedly dirt poor” and moved often. He lived in various parts of the Greater Los Angeles area, including Compton, Lakewood, Downey, Linwood, Long Beach, and Belmont Shore.
“We moved, like, 40 times before I was in the fourth grade,” he says.
One thing the family depended on during the holiday seasons from about 1966 on was getting a meal and toys from The Salvation Army. When Zoro was 7, in 1969, his mother asked for drums, and the Army delivered.
Mickey Mouse
drum set
Zoro awoke that Christmas morning to find a Mickey Mouse drum set with paper heads.
“Before they brought me that drum set, I literally beat on Folgers coffee cans,” Zoro says.
“[The drum set] sparked a seed in me, and I never lost that desire to play the drums from the day I got that kit. That dream started then, and it never died.”
Zoro bought another drum set years later and practiced and practiced. He got so good that today, he is a world–class drummer. Over a 30–year career, he has toured and recorded with Lenny Kravitz, Bobby Brown, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, The New Edition, Jody Watley, Sean Lennon, Philip Bailey, and Lisa Marie Presley, among many others.
Known as the “Minister of Groove,” Zoro is consistently voted “No. 1 R&B Drummer & Educator” in three different publications: Modern Drummer, Drum! and Rhythm. He also has written a best–selling book, The Commandments of R&B Drumming.
Where it all
started
Despite all his success,
Zoro has never forgotten the “kind people” from The Salvation Army. He remembers that they came around to pray with him and offer “encouraging words.”
“It always made me feel like, ‘Wow! Jesus is real.’ It gave me hope,” Zoro says. “When people care about you when you’re underprivileged and when you would otherwise be marginalized,
it gives you hope. It gives you hope in people and gives you hope in yourself that maybe you’re not so bad; maybe you can make it at something because you’re worth something to someone.
“For me, it bred hope and expectancy in my heart that I could somehow make it as a musician and as a drummer and a speaker. Those were the desires of my heart.”
Zoro has had both of those desires fulfilled. He
remembers being on tour with Frankie Valli in Las Vegas and speaking at a church at 7 p.m. before rushing to a concert at
9 p.m.
“I always did the two beside each other,” he says. “I’m an encourager and a rallier and a motivator.”
Zoro, who recently moved to Nashville, appeared at a recent Salvation Army youth event in Mississippi and says he would like to do more for the organization that has meant so much to him.
“I would love to have the opportunity to speak at all sorts of Salvation Army events,” he says.
He wants to share his story about the way the Army affected him with its consistent holiday ministry to his family.
“This happened every year as I grew up,” he says. “This wasn’t like a one–time encounter. This was throughout my entire childhood. The Salvation Army totally blessed us in huge and tremendous ways that really made a great impact in my life.
“The stuff that I learned from their giving gave me a heart to give, and it’s the very stuff I teach my own children today.”
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