Hassan Zaoual - dies in France

Regular visitors to the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music will be saddened to hear of the death of Hassan Zaoual. Hassan had been a guest at the Fez Forums on several occasions. Hassan Zaoual died last week at age 60 in Lille, France.

A brilliant development economist and professor at the University of Littoral Côte d'Opale in Dunkirk, Hassan was known for his theory of symbolic sites of belonging. "I claim that human beings can only function from a symbolic site. The symbolic site, these are beliefs, practices and meaning. (...) A village, a neighborhood, city, region may be symbolic sites. A company too," he explained during a meeting in Fez in 2005. He continued his desire to build cultural bridges between North and South and maintained a strong attachment to his native Morocco.