George Sawa was born in Alexandria, Egypt. He has over 50 years experience in Arabic music performance, history and theory and has performed and lectured extensively worldwide: Canada, USA, Brazil, Mexico, Europe (Spain, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Greece) and the Middle East (Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates).
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He studied piano with Mme Irene Drakides, herself a student of the famed educator Alfred Cortot. He studied qanun, theory and voice at the Higher Institute of Arabic Music.
After immigrating to Canada, he studied ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto, and obtained his doctorate in historical Arabic musicology. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on medieval, modern, and religious music of the Middle East at the University of Toronto and at York University.
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He is the author of Music Performance Practice in the Early cAbbasid Era. 132-320 AH/750-932 AD; Rhythmic Theories and Practices in Arabic Writings to 339AH/950 CE (Ottawa: The Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2004 and 2009); and An Arabic Musical and Socio-Cultural Glossary of Kitab al-Aghani (The Book of Songs) of al-Isbahani (d. 971) (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2015); Erotica, Love, and Humor in Arabia. Spicy Stories from the Book of Songs of al-Isfahani (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2016); Musical and Socio-Cultural Arnecdotes from Kitab al-Aghani. Annotated Translations and Commentaries (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2018).
He has published over 50 articles on Arabic music in refereed journals and encyclopedias, and is frequently invited to give lectures and concerts worldwide. In 2005, he received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture for his research in Arabic music history.
George has been the musical director for several productions of the Toronto-based Arabesque Dance Company, and taught hundreds of dancers at the Arabesque Academy and Hannan's Bellydance Studio in Toronto, as well as studios in Canada, USA, Brazil and Mexico.
His CD, The Art of the Early Egyptian Qanun, Vol. 1, was nominated for a JUNO Award in World Music in 2009. A subsequent volume, The Art of the Early Egyptian Qanun, Vol. 2, was released in 2009. His Egyptian Music Appreciation and Practice for Bellydancers has won international acclaim and is an invaluable - one of a kind - companion to bellydancers all over the world (it is also available in Chinese, French, Greek, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, German and Portuguese). A companion set of two DVDs produced with Lulu Hartenbach in Brazil includes over 50 tracks of dancing instruction from his CDs and book: Lulu and George Dimitri Sawa. Aprecia≥ao da Muœsica AŒrabe Para Bailarinas. Teoria e Praœctica. 2 vols. Sao Paulo: Ventreoteca. Produzido por Kaleidoscopio de Ideias. Shimmie, 2015.