My family musician Toni Makhoul

Please note that I do wholeheartedly respect, appreciate and love all types of music (even though as a child, I hated classical music because it made me cry).

Given that, for me, my notion of “music” came in different stages.

Firstly, throughout my childhood, my introduction to it was solely about me liking an artist(s) and/or music band(s), wanting to buy their album and have as many favourite songs of theirs as I wanted. Then, when I moved to Lebanon with my family in December 1997, I got to know the rest of my relatives better and as I got to know my paternal uncle; I soon discovered that he was a musician and a really talented pianist but at the time, it was just a hobby and passion of his that was heard nearby particularly when he played the piano.

Then by my teenagehood, I started discovering different music genres, different musical rhythms, chants, melodies and harmonies and better understanding them in terms of their tune.

I then starting paying more attention to the structure and rhythm of my voice when I sing...and then I discovered that I had a reasonably good singing voice and I could sing, but I unfortunately can’t have singing as my chosen career path because I have a mild speech impairment that sometimes affects my breathing when and/or while I talk, so I just casually sing alone sometimes. I’d like to take singing lessons one day. My personal music motto is: “You’re never too old or too young to go ‘retro’” because I got into the 80s music when I was 16 in 2005.

By my adulthood, I then started paying close attention to the lyrics of my favourite songs or new songs that I hear and I guess the reason for this is because, when I was growing up, I spent most of my childhood reading books, reading dictionaries, playing educational computer games and writing in my diary/journal which now enables me to incorporate music into my writing articles, with one exception though: because I’m not a singer, I’m therefore not able to say to my readers: “This is the perfect song for you to listen to” because it’s unfair for me to do that as everyone has different tastes when it comes to music and singing but what I can say instead is: “I can relate to this song because...(and state my reason for it) or “I really love this song because I can relate to its lyrics” or “The lyrics of this song make me feel...(and put whatever emotion that you may feel about it).”

My paternal uncle Antoine “Toni” Makhoul is a music composer, arranger, and producer. The genre of music that Toni likes to create and play is a light jazz and pop instrumental. He just likes this kind of music and he thinks it is the best way to talk about emotions and love. It’s commonly heard when you are feeling bad and/or when you are feeling happy and when you are in love and/or when you left your lover. He thinks it is the music that has the most common emotional areas and this will make it universal and acceptable worldwide.

You’re welcome to check out his work on his website www.tonimakhoul.com or his Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/ToniMakhoul .

As his niece, never in a million years did I ever think that I’d be living on the other side of the world writing music press releases to promote my paternal uncle’s work which has been a dream come true for me because I’ve always loved music and wanted to somehow explore it further.

I come from an article/story writing career background but I’ve always wondered how people “song-write”. See, for me, as an article/story writer; I sort of see writing as similar to acting, the only difference is that with acting you need costumes, props and to read off a written script to help you get into character whereas with writing you need the research and/or verbal communication between, on and/or about the subject that you write about; to help you get into character in order to be able to write a good article or story. So I was wondering whether or not “songwriters” have to be in a “songwriters’ zone” and get into “character” in the same way that normal and/or other “types” of writers have to in order to write a good song.          

In concluding this article, I’d like to say that writing it has been so much fun for me and I’d like to thank my paternal uncle Antoine “Toni” from the bottom of my heart for trusting me to write this which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing. I’m so proud to have both the arts of music and writing running through my paternal family genes because I feel that writing this article has given me the opportunity to combine both my knowledge and love of music and writing into it and I just hope to do and serve my uncle justice with it.

Written by niece Maria Makhoul