Francis Marmande, a prolific writer, academic, and longtime jazz critic for *Le Monde*, has died at the age of 80.Marmande’s decades-long career encompassed music journalism, literary scholarship, and contributions to French higher education, including a post at the University of Paris-VII Denis Diderot [[1]].His passing marks a loss for both the French music and literary communities, as noted by *Le Monde* Saturday .
A respected critic who chronicled the world of jazz for several newspapers for decades, Francis Marmande has died.
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Francis Marmande, a writer, man of letters, and jazz critic for Le Monde, died Thursday, December 25th, after a battle with cancer at the age of 80, the newspaper announced on Saturday, December 27th. “This is a heavy blow for Le Monde,” the publication wrote in its online edition, confirming information from Sud-Ouest.
Born in Bayonne on January 10, 1945, Francis Marmande settled in Paris in the 1960s. A former student at the École Normale Supérieure de Saint-Cloud, he held an aggregation in modern letters and a doctorate in letters, after a thesis devoted to Georges Bataille. The author of around twenty books, he taught French literature at the University of Lyon-II and then at the University of Paris-VII Denis-Diderot, where he remained in office until his retirement in 2011.
A renowned columnist, he followed jazz news for decades, notably for Le Monde, but also at Jazz Magazine. He was also a double bassist. Passionate about bullfighting, he was also a taurine journalist, regularly publishing his chronicles in Le Monde until 2010. A draftsman, Francis Marmande illustrated the cover page of Jazz Magazine for many years, as well as book covers, notably by Georges Perec and Jean-Paul Sartre.
