He’s never taken a music lesson, he can’t read music, and he’s deaf in one ear but these are just trivial things for Brooklyn native Luis Burgos. Burgos, a 19-year-old native of East New York, will be heading to Los Angeles January 8, 2011 to take part in Guitar Center’s annual drum-off competition where the grand prize is $25, 000. In a interview with the Daily News, Burgos’s mother, Miriam Burgos a Pentecostal pastor, told the newspaper that doctors use to say Burgos couldn’t play drums which is why they called him “a miracle…the doctors said he couldn’t [play drums] but God said he could.”
The young musical virtuoso credits his growing up in a household on New Lots Ave for his musical talents since the Ave is full of instrumentalists by “watching, listening very carefully and learning by myself,” Burgos is purely taught through close observation. Burgos isn’t the only musical genius of the family, his sister sings, his brother plays the piano, and his mother plays the guitar making this family the 21st century version of the Partridge family.
One of five finalists nationwide, Burgos has beaten out 4,000 drummers since starting the competition back in September in the Atlantic Terminal Mall. Judges of the competition grades performances on mechanics, style and creativity which Burgos has managed to score high on. Burgos already has plans for the winnings if he wins, with the belated Christmas gift he hopes to put some the money into the bank and use some of it to get a car. Well good luck from all of us in NYC, and show L.A. what drummer boy from Brooklyn can do!
