{"id":1723,"date":"2014-12-16T08:10:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T13:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/?p=1723"},"modified":"2014-12-17T07:22:18","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T12:22:18","slug":"zoro-speaks-words-of-inspiration-at-the-nashville-berklee-jam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/zoro-speaks-words-of-inspiration-at-the-nashville-berklee-jam\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoro Speaks Words of Inspiration at the Nashville Berklee Jam"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the last Nashville Berklee Jam to be held at The Rutledge, which sadly closed its doors shortly thereafter, international rock star, author, and motivational speaker, Zoro<\/a> addressed a room full of hungry musicians with a heartfelt, life-changing talk. Well known as a professional drummer who\u2019s played with the likes of Lenny Kravitz<\/a>, Bobby Brown, and Frankie Valli, among countless others, Zoro, often referred to as \u201cThe Minister of Groove\u201d, is also an educator who has given hundreds of clinics and authored the critically acclaimed \u201cThe Commandments of R&B Drumming\u201d. He’s also known in the world of motivational speakers, having given hundreds of talks and authoring the book \u201cThe Big Gig – Big Picture Thinking for Success<\/a>\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

But tonight’s talk was not about drumming, and while it delved into the world of professional musicians and artistry, at the core of this talk was a universal message that applies to all humans, that of finding your purpose in the world by discovering and maximizing your strengths. After his talk I was honored to participate in a performance with Zoro and A-list Session bassist, Mike Chapman. \u00a0There\u2019s a video of Zoro\u2019s talk and some of this performance at the end of the article. Here are a few excerpts from his talk:\"ZoroTalk\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe world has changed more in the previous 50 years that it has in the last 5000\u2026. but there’s a few foundational things that I think will never change\u2026Each person in this room is born is born with a certain gift and a certain talent. And for many of us, it’s musical talent. What will not change is excellence\u2026no matter where the world goes or where music is headed, to me, if you have a musical gift, the most important thing is to exercise it, to develop it and to make it, point blank, excellent\u2026 I always feel that if you do something really, really well, eventually there’ll be a place for it somewhere. In a world where people don’t do things on a high level anymore, I still think that being excellent will make you stand out amongst the crowd…\u201d<\/p>\n

He spoke of diversity and the need to hone in on your strengths:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI think each person here has more than one ability. I think your musical ability is one of them, but I think there are many. For me, I just pursued things that were naturally instinctive to me and interested me naturally. I wasn’t thinking business, I wasn’t thinking in 30 years I can be drumming, and be an educator, an author and speaker\u2026 I was thinking \u2018I like writing\u2026 I’d like to write an article to help people. I like teaching\u2019\u2026 so everything became a natural evolution of things I was already good at\u2026 so don’t worry about what you’re not good at, there’s going to be plenty, find out where your strengths are and then work on turning those into something that’s really monumental and excellent.\u201d<\/p>\n

I loved his take on marketing:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe best marketing tool in the whole wide world is to just be bad-ass at what you do…because other people will tell people about you\u2026 people take notice of excellence, whatever it is. How many of you, when you go to a restaurant, take notice of someone who is an excellent server? We all notice when people do a good job\u2026when I see a movie that’s great I tell everybody about it, but when I see one that sucks I also tell everybody don’t go waste your money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Often overlooked in the music industry as well as many others is the shortage of, and need for extreme professionalism:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the things it takes to succeed are very practical, but I find they seem to slip by the musical community. Things like; being on time, coming prepared, having your stuff together, being reliable\u2026 half of success is just showing up on time and just being ready. These things to me are totally obvious, but they seem to slip by a lot of the people that are creative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps one of the most important points he makes is that We Are in the Service Industry<\/b>!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"ZoroTalks3\"<\/a>\u201cBe accommodating. I look at everything that I do as really one thing, I’m a servant. I’m here to serve. Tonight I’m here to serve with my words, and I’m here to serve with my playing. I’m never here to be served, always here to<\/i> serve\u2026 a lot of people have a perception of rock ‘n roll and fame\u2026 everyone’s catering to you and everyone’s worshiping you\u2026 there is an element of that that’s true, but I don’t perceive it that way. I perceive it as I have an opportunity and a platform, and an opportunity of privilege to serve people\u2026 I’m either serving the artist I’m playing with, or the crowd that I’m playing to.\u201d<\/p>\n

On creativity and vision:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the greatest gifts human beings have\u2026 is the ability to dream\u2026 To dream up something that never existed and then to have the privilege of creating it is the greatest privilege in the world. And we all have that ability to dream and to believe that if we are willing to act on it and pursue it, we [can] turn that dream into a reality. It’s a great privilege and that’s what makes life really fascinating and interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

He began a few words about the journey of self-discovery and life with a quote from Mark Twain:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us are anxious to be praised for the one gift that we don’t possess, rather than the 15 that we do.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don’t learn to enjoy the journey, the process, you’ll never enjoy life\u2026the joy of life is in the process itself, and the journey of learning and growing and developing, that’s what life is\u2026When people are not fulfilled it\u2019s because they’re not moving toward something. You\u2019re created to have purpose, to be moving forward in a direction towards the accomplishment of something.\u201d<\/p>\n

We’ve had many great guests speak at these events, all of them with unique angles, many catering to specific niches, and they’ve all been inspiring. This talk really got me thinking on many different levels and was one of my favorites to date. No matter what you do in life or what you do for a profession, many of life’s challenges and problems are universal. We can all work to discover our gifts, to hone them, to share them, to allow them to let us shine a little light in the world. Don’t let your dreams sit on the sidelines, find your gifts and make them excellent!<\/em><\/p>\n

I would like to thank Zoro for sharing his words of wisdom and inspiration and for kicking out a great jam! I would like to thank Jeffrey Lien<\/a> for helping me host this event and hooking us up with Zoro, the Rutledge and Andy Aquino for hosting our events for the past two years, Frank Sass for always providing great sound and lighting, and Jack Zander<\/a> for capturing all the magic on video. <\/i><\/p>\n

Zoro’s Talk (39 minutes)<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=p0JPstlJAFQ&feature=youtu.be<\/p>\n

Hear My Train A Comin’<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=45iiMtKErwg&feature=youtu.be<\/p>\n

Cissy Strut (with 5 minute drum solo)<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bXtXOzt5jNA&feature=youtu.be<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the last Nashville Berklee Jam to be held at The Rutledge, which sadly closed its doors shortly thereafter, international rock star, author, and motivational speaker, Zoro addressed a room full of hungry musicians with a heartfelt, life-changing talk. Well known as a professional drummer who\u2019s played with the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Bobby Brown, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[109,20,13,68,274,61,31,271,289,291,8,5,26,39,36,273,272,6,25,270],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1723"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1766,"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1723\/revisions\/1766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashvillemusicianssurvivalmanual.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}