Lipton & Durrani: World Sacred Music in Fez

Intrepid travelers Barbara Lipton and Zia Durrani journeyed together to Fes, Morocco. Illustrating their descriptions with Barbara’s photographs and with CDs, they will share their experience there of the annual celebration of sacred music from around the world, with a special focus on Sufi music. ECS Board Member Zia Durrani was born and raised in Kashmir, India, where she lived until 1963. Educated in India and England, she was a teacher of English in a women’s college in Srinagar, her home town, until she married and left Kashmir to live briefly in Madras, and then moved to London. Zia came to the US in 1976, and lived in various places before coming to South Orange. Zia has three children: her two girls live in New Jersey and her son lives in Kansas. ECS Friend Barbara Lipton previously worked at the Newark Museum as Library Director and Special Projects Director: curator of Whaling Days in NJ, SURVIVAL: Life and Art of the Alaskan Eskimo; Director and Curator, Tibetan Museum, Staten Is., NY; Adjunct Professor of Art History The New School, SUNY Purchase, Drew University, Montclair University. Currently Chair, Exhibitions Committee, Atlantic Highlands Arts Council; Speakers Bureau, the Newark Museum. She has exhibited her photographs and has spoken at ECS a number of times, on “Masks — Art and Ceremony” (Oct. 2013) and, with Zia Durrani, on the handcrafts they saw on a trip to Gujarat, India (Apr. 2012).