Norman Najeh Mallouk

Norman Najeh Mallouk was a musician from Tripoli, Liban. He was the lead singer of Les Princes and Los Amigos. From artist's autobiography : I was born in Tripoli, Lebanon on 22 July 1945. I come from a non-musical background and I bought my first guitar after I took a lesson at Amin Azar El Zehrieh Tripoli where I met a lot of musicians. I learned to play through the books. I met someone from Colombia who was visiting Australia and by pure luck was a top guitarist. We became very good friends and I learned from him many new styles such as bolero-waltz- quapango -strumming with all fingers to be able to sing along professionally like Besame-Malaguena etc. This was a good start for me as it was not known to many. I formed a new band cerca 1966 made up of a four piece band. My band members were Hasan Su on drums, Elie Akkawi on sax and Samir Hayat on bass and myself as vocal and guitar. We worked in El Haddad all summer in Hotel Barakat. There are two photos of two different groups in a song called (hier encore) on youtube and there is a photo of me playing my goodwin guitar-Organ. In the first photo in the video you see Raymond Abi Arraj on drums, Samir Hayek on bass, Zuhair on guitar, Morris Nahlous on guitar and myself doing the singing. I sang of my composition twice on TV with abusalim el tabl insa hmumack the other at the same program after a lady sang- if i had a hammer in arabic. Prior to coming to Australia I learnt hair dressing as a back up in case I was not successful with a music career. I was lucky enough to have someone offer me their salon with all the accessories included. After arriving in Australia on 10 October 1969 I worked as a process worker in Namco for 8 months doing 10 -12 hour days which was extremely difficult due to my very limited English. In the year 1974 in Lebanon i spent all summer working in El Hadad-Hasroun Hotel in Syr El Kabir with Roger Bendali, Fawaz ElYafi, Tony Abu Dib and Roger Kayruz. I was also a music teacher to Iskandar Hadchity who was a great student along with Samir Hayek who went on and became top bass player.