Patron of the 23rd UNESCO Sound Week
An unrepentant serotonin dealer, Barbara Pravi is known for encouraging self-love (Bravo), positive rebellion (Lève-toi) and respect for freedoms (Marianne, L’exil et l’asile).
In 2021, her masterful Voilà, now a quadruple diamond single with over 200 million streams, earned her second place at Eurovision and set her vibrato on the road to fame. Thanks to the album On n’enferme pas les oiseaux, which sold over 100,000 copies in France and abroad, she also won a “Révélation féminine” at the Victoires de la musique awards and the Grand Prix Sacem for song of the year.
Patron of the Collective d’Arles, a women’s self-help center, the woman who testified about her abortions and denounced the toxic violence of her first boyfriend puts a tune in her personal jukebox every March 8, her cascade of loops and her enthusiasm at the service of her fellow human beings. His songs draw their sap from his convictions, but also from his family tree, whose ramifications stretch from Serbia to Iran, Poland and France. For her latest album, the artist retraced the thread of her ancestry, following in the footsteps of a gypsy ancestor, christened la Pieva, literally the singer, a widow who travelled from village to village in the Serbian mountains.
On stage, seasoned by a 150-date tour of 20 countries, she has swapped her partridge looks for a leonine power. Knowing how to love herself better, she sows passions, in the manner of Dalida, whose hits she covered at Radio France’s Hyper Weekend Festival. Explosive, twirling, flailing her arms or holding out her fist, she has the effervescence of those who sweep everything away. Generous, she can set off an ola in a stadium of 80,000 people, as she did at the opening of the Jeux de la Francophonie in Congo, or deliver a piano-voice in the intimacy of a chapel. She won’t fail to perform at Le Zénith in Paris on March 26, 2026.
photo credit Thibault Manuel
