"Marcel Botbot had gone to Paris for a family celebration on March 10th and had had to stay there because of the closure of the borders," said Maurice Elbaz, a close relative of the deceased and producer of his brother, the singer Haïm Botbol.

The singer, who suffered from heart problems, "didn't put up with the virus like a lot of old people," said Maurice Elbaz, a producer in Casablanca for almost twenty years.

Born in 1945 in the city of Fez, Marcel Botbol comes from a family of artists of Jewish faith famous in Morocco. He is the son of the artist Jacob Botbol and the brother of the singer Haïm Botbol.

Marcel Botbol was famous for his high quality interpretations of the gharnati and popular Moroccan repertoires.