An Inexhaustible Voice, a Soul, a Spirit

The remarkable story of a song, a singer, and triumph over unthinkable adversity

Emma Kok, performing with André Rieu at Maastricht, 2024. From Wikimedia.

Sometimes, a mind-bending story writes itself in reverse. Such a case came before me the week before last, in a social media post that—as I came to realize—offered many of the things I love most: a fine musical composition; a superb performance; the French language; a family of prodigies; the conquest of horrific illness by technology; stories of triumph over personal adversity; righteous mentorship; and a relentless urge to remold one’s own struggles into a catalyst for good. The video that sparked this essay has been viewed 80 million times over several years, so perhaps you already know all or part of the story. But here’s how it unfurled for me.

Someone in my X/Twitter stream posted a video of a delicate-looking 16-year-old girl singing at a gigantic music festival and captioned the video with spare, cryptic, powerful praise. The caption made it impossible for me not to click on the video, and the praise proved understated. (Scroll down farther and you’ll find a video of the same young woman performing the same song a year earlier, at age 15.)

The song, “Voilà,” was a much-better-than-average, French language, Eurovision song. The genre was classic chanson that one could easily imagine sung by Edith Piaf or Charles Aznavour. The performer was a Dutch teenager named Emma Kok, accompanied by an orchestra and chorus directed by Dutch conductor/violinist André Rieu. Her voice begins softly and plaintively and swells over the course of the song to explosive power. Her facial expressions and hand gestures convey layer upon layer of volcanic emotion. Watching the video with me, my wife asked, “How does a young little thing that find so much force?” A few more Google searches, and we found out.

First of all, the song itself offers depth. The original performer, Barbara Pravi, co-composed the song (with Igit and Lili Poe) and released it in 2020. In 2021, she represented France at Eurovision and took second place. Chanson is a genre focused on storytelling, and “Voilà” is an autobiographical tale of angst and survival, born of Pravi’s own history of conjugal abuse. Without becoming maudlin, the words express a suffering woman’s overwhelming desire simply to have her story heard. A small portion of lyrics go as follows:

“Écoutez-moi / Moi, la chanteuse à demi
Parlez de moi / À vos amours, à vos amis
Parlez-leur de cette fille aux yeux noirs et de son rêve fou
Moi c’que j’veux, c’est écrire des histoires qui arrivent jusqu’à vous
…
Me voilà dans le bruit et dans le silence
Regardez-moi, ou du moins ce qu’il en reste”

Or, in translation:

“Listen to me / Me, the half-singer
Talk about me / To your loves, to your friends
Tell them about this black-eyed girl and her crazy dream
What I want is to write stories that reach you
…
Here I am in the noise and in the silence
Look at me, or at least what's left of me”

Pravi was 27 years old when her song premiered, so it’s understandable that someone of that age could muster such verbal firepower. But what about the teenage Emma Kok? A few more Google searches revealed the core of the story. Here’s the video (and I always recommend listening with headphones to grasp the full strength of the performance):

In his introduction, Maestro Rieu notes that Emma comes from a musically gifted family. He points to her brother, Enzo, a violinist. A glance at her Wikipedia page notes that her sister, Sophie, is a classical singer. But then Rieu’s introduction tells the eye-opening portion of the story.

“Enzo has a little sister, Emma. Unfortunately, Emma has a rare, but terrible disease. Her stomach is paralyzed. She cannot eat. All the food goes through a little tube directly into her stomach. But Emma is a brave girl. She wants to live a normal life. And Emma has a dream. She has a beautiful voice. She wants to be a singer. She did ‘The Voice Kids’ here in Holland, and immediately, she won.”

Emma’s bio says she has been on that feeding tube since she was nine months old and has endured bullying over her gastroparesis and slight stature. No doubt, over most of human history, such a condition would have been fatal at an extremely early age. But we have the great good fortune to live in an era when medical science scowls at and rages against illness.

Rieu heard Emma’s winning performance on The Voice Kids and invited her to perform with him and, later, to tour the world with him. Here on this video, he notes that she has channeled her efforts beyond her own aspirations:

“She created a foundation to raise money to study this terrible disease, and perhaps even, in the future, cure it.”

For those wishing to contribute, Foundation Gastrostars is her charitable endeavor. The website provides more information on Emma and on her illness.

I often quote a line or two from William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. After pondering all that I’ve written above, it seems appropriate in so many ways to provide a longer segment of that speech:

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help a man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

And now, if you’ll forgive me, I seem to have something in my eye.

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BARBARA PRAVI, “VOILÀ”

Here is the official video of “Voilà,” featuring singer/co-composed Barbara Pravi. The imagery speaks of her own vulnerability and suffering. The English translation of the full lyrics appear as subtitles as she sings. (Once again, headphones are recommended.)

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BASTIAT’S WINDOW publisher Robert F. Graboyes is an economist, journalist, and musician whose five degrees include a PhD in economics from Columbia University. An award-winning professor, he received the Reason Foundation’s 2014 Bastiat Prize for Journalism. His musical compositions are on YouTube.