Stuart Sherwin, Aswat vocalist since 2012

I can honestly say that I would probably have never joined Aswat were it not for my lifelong friend, Sahar El Abbadi. When I say lifelong, I mean lifelong. We were neighbors living within a few hundred feet of each other from my infancy until she went to UC Berkeley–and I joined her there as well one year later. I remember when I would play with her and her brother Marwan I was always interested by the Arabic their Egyptian father Amr would speak to them. I picked up a few words here and there, enough to make my first Arabic joke around junior high. The joke was: What do you get when you mix a bear and a pig? Nos a-dib  wa nos a-khenzir! (half a bear and half a pig.)

When I went to Berkeley I decided to peruse Arabic further, along with my studies in Math and Physics. It was in my second year in Berkeley when I first heard of Aswat, because Sahar was singing with them. I saw the show and was awed, but I didn’t imagine I would ever join myself. Then I studied abroad in Cairo for a year, drastically improved my spoken Arabic, and experienced firsthand life in a great Arab metropolis.

When I came back to Berkeley, I knew that I wanted to continue to speak colloquial Arabic, but had no great desire to continue with the cut-and-dry of the formal language. Sahar was still singing with Aswat and managed to convince me to come to the first meeting of the season. And what I found here in Aswat has convinced me to stick around: I have found a community diverse in origin, age, and occupation, held together by a love for Arabic music. From Arabic side conversations to trying to decipher the Maestro’s soliloquies, I have found plenty of opportunities to improve on my Arabic, but more than that I feel that I have found in Aswat a place to make great art, form close connections, and grow as a person.