Local Children’s Musician Uses Music to Share Joy – and Hardships

Songwriter and performer Symon Hajjar with his wife, Princess Hajjar, and their children Ezra, 8, and Isaac, 10. Photo by Makenzie Howard Photography

Symon Hajjar’s passion for songwriting has been instrumental in his road to recovery.

The 44-year-old Tulsa native is embracing his longtime role as a children’s musician to overcome a colorectal cancer diagnosis he received in May.

Symon has faced an uphill battle, but humming tunes and penning lyrics in between hospital visits over the past several months have helped him stay a step ahead of the hardships.

“My knee-jerk reaction is to just stuff it down or to crawl in a hole,” Symon said. “Music pulls me out of that. Music allows me to put hard feelings into a beautiful song and then to share it with others.”

Building Hot Toast Music Co.

Four years before his diagnosis, Symon was performing his first gig as Hot Toast Music Company, a specialized band he created for children that would eventually propel him to local stardom among young audiences.

Hot Toast inspires, teaches, and connects with children through live, interactive experiences to create the “ultimate mixtape for growing up,” according to the band’s mission statement.

The group uses unique sounds, props, imagery and other fun tools to engage with kids on a deeper level, giving them an opportunity to express themselves through the show’s lively lyrics — a concept that Symon first adopted as a music teacher at B’nai Emunah Preschool in Tulsa.

“I would try to mimic and amplify as much of their perspective and their world of play that I could in the music, and it just became really exciting and an endless source of inspiration for me,” Symon said of his students. “It’s something fresh, a different way of seeing things.”

Symon’s knack for novel tunes didn’t stop at the classroom, however. He, alongside his wife, Princess, have gleaned even more creative ideas for new melodies at home from their two sons, Ezra, 8, and Isaac, 10, who have helped steer the topics of each chorus and verse.

“In a way, they’re like a compass,” Symon said. “They are the experts at some of the things that are the most important like kindness, generosity, gentleness, getting along … but through the lens of childhood wisdom and innocence.”

Princess added, “There’s so many individual situations happening in the world with specific nuances and complications. As our kids are getting older, it’s just continuing to use music or songwriting as a way to have those conversations.”

Photo by Austin Smith

An unexpected diagnosis

Symon’s ability to foster that open dialogue through music has ultimately expanded Hot Toast into the popular program it is today, boasting hundreds of humorous and heartening songs across multiple albums and thousands of followers throughout the Tulsa area.

That growth also came with a busy schedule, with Symon regularly booking a full lineup of crowded gigs, “playing multiple shows every day, upwards of 300 concerts a year,” he said.

His plans to continue that trend, however, suddenly paused at the beginning of the summer when he received unexpected news that he had colorectal cancer — a diagnosis that led him to undergo four major surgeries in less than two months.

“I felt healthy, so the diagnosis definitely came as a shock,” he said. “By the time the second surgery came along, it was apparent that I was going to need to cancel everything for my summer, which was over 100 concerts.”

What was slated to be Symon’s busiest season to date turned into his slowest, trading his time performing on a stage with that of recovering in a hospital bed.

His tour indefinitely halted, Symon shifted gears to focus on traveling between both Ascension St. John Medical Center and Oklahoma Cancer Specialists and Research Institute in Tulsa as well as MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

Within a short period of time from May to July, complications that “became a bigger and bigger deal as we went along,” he said, continued to arise. Enduring everything from sepsis to a hematoma to an emergency ileostomy, Symon’s longest time admitted to the hospital was 29 straight days.

More obstacles also meant he would have to spend more time away from writing and performing his music — around 90 days in total.

“That three months where I couldn’t play is the longest I’ve gone in 24 years,” Symon said. “I mean, I’ve literally done it every single day of my life since I was 19 years old. I’m always writing, and so to have that taken from me during that time was really hard.”

Princess added, “The hospital experience was a lot. I knew I couldn’t just say, ‘It’ll be fine, you’ll be back at it in no time,’ because we just don’t know those things. It can be hard to deal with.”

Symon also faced several rounds of chemotherapy — six in all, as of November — which contributed to his piling stress amid the ongoing difficulties, including forgetfulness and trouble focusing as a result of the treatments.

Holding onto hope – and music

The Hajjars didn’t give up, however. With each uphill step, the married couple of 15 years grew closer together, embraced their faith, and held onto hope that Symon’s songwriting would eventually return, even if it was one lyric at a time.

“Since chemo, I’ve had thousands of little voice notes and just scribbling things on paper,” he said. “Any time a thought pops in my mind, I know it’s going be gone immediately, so I have to write everything down.”

Princess closely walked alongside her husband as he struggled to relearn old songs and create and memorize new ones in between appointments. But every recording and pen stroke served as another reminder that Symon’s heart for music and reaching others through his craft was far from fading out.

“I think it was just remarkable to feel like there was still weight to the art that he had made thus far,” Princess said. “It was wild to see how much he missed it, and this was still what he wanted to do. It was like, ‘This has been meaningful; it still is.’”

By the end of July, Symon was able to pick his guitar back up and slowly begin combining chords and melodies to create new sounds to the tune of a renewed spirit.

“There’s this anxiety of, ‘Is it (my music) gone?’ And then when it was still there, it was just a burst of hope,” he said.

Symon took that inspiration to write about a dozen new songs, including one of his favorites titled, “Am I Still Myself?” which addresses the concepts of identity and loss.

“It’s just this idea that we have all these measures for how we identify ourselves,” he said, “and so much of it is tied to the things we do or create, sometimes the jobs we have, or the opinions we have, and in the hospital, those things were all stripped away from me.

“I was left thinking, ‘OK, well, who am I without all these things?’ And what I found is that I was still myself and that my art flowed out of the person that I was and not vice versa. So, I think that since being able to play again, it has helped me process my own grief and melancholy through the situation.”

Princess echoed her husband’s sentiments, particularly as it relates to many of the tracks that he wrote prior to receiving his cancer diagnosis.

“I think we felt so grateful for the songs because so many of them focus on how to process emotions and how to deal with hard things and giving yourself grace and giving yourself space, and those are so needed now,” she said.

A supportive community

Thankfully, the Hajjars haven’t had to navigate that range of feelings alone. Their friends and family, along with many of Symon’s devoted followers, have rallied around them with an outpouring of prayers, encouragement and support over the past several months.

“So many families of Hot Toast fans, the kids that I played for all these years, really came to our rescue, showing up at the hospital, bringing us supplies when we didn’t have them, just being on call for any kind of advice and advocating for us,” Symon said. “I think that has been incredibly humbling … just this circle of connectivity and community.”

Princess added, “There have been so many little experiences that just absolutely make all of this bearable. It’s just been unreal how much people gave and supported us in all of this.”

The road to recovery

Rounding the corner to recovery, Symon recently completed chemotherapy and is awaiting the results from various cancer tests to greenlight him for a low-risk or remission status.

In the meantime, he is continuing to put pen to paper on new material, playing for small crowds of his friends and family, and posting brief updates and catchy jingles on his social media pages. He’s also planning to release a new album and a new book sometime in the coming months.

“I’ve done so much with music, and I think one thing I’ve taken away from this experience is that I just really want to share it more,” Symon said. “These are a very human experiences, and music allows me to be present in it and not run away from it, because I think there is deep meaning in our suffering.”

Through it all, Symon is simply focused on making kids smile through silly songs that carry soul-stirring messages — tying it all back to one of Hot Toast’s core tenets: “If it sparks a child’s imagination or piques their curiosity, then it’s a song waiting to be written.”

For more information about Hot Toast Music Company, visit their Facebook page, Instagram (@hottoastmusicco) or website at hottoastmusic.com.

Colorectal Cancer on the Rise in Younger People: What You Should Know

Information from Dr. Bryce Murray (colon and rectal surgery, Surgical Associates/Oklahoma Surgical Hospital):

There definitely has been an increase in the incidents of colorectal cancer in younger individuals. We’ve seen that probably for the last 10 years, enough so that the screening recommendations have changed. About two years ago, the screening age for colon cancer was 50; it’s now down to 45. So asymptomatic people who are 45 are now recommended to have some screening modality for colorectal cancer because of the incidents in younger people.

The reason we do screening for colon cancer is that oftentimes it’s asymptomatic until it’s present or it’s become more pronounced or at a more advanced stage, so that’s why we do screening because we want to catch polyps before they become cancer.

For people that are young, the concerning symptoms would be bleeding or a change in bowel function. If you have symptoms like rectal bleeding, it needs to be evaluated with a colonoscopy or some other modality to make sure it’s not something more ominous.

For colonoscopy, you start at age 45, and then if that colonoscopy is normal and you don’t have any other risk factors like family history, then it would be every 10 years. If you have other risk factors, if you have a family history of colon cancer, or a personal history of polyps or other disease, then that frequency gets dropped down to five years or less.

We’re not really sure why there’s been this increase (of colorectal cancer) in younger people. I think the concern is that it’s got to be something in our environment, we’re just not entirely sure what it is.

I think there could be more awareness. Because of social media, I think we do hear more conversations about it, but I definitely think there could be more awareness on the topic.

Art Haddaway is a journalist and photographer with over 20 years of experience covering a variety of topics for various publications and organizations. He is also the author of “Reflections of an Editor: Insights & Observations of a Small-town Newsman.”