WAÏ and BABËL: A Shared Rhythm

WAÏ has spent more than a decade asking a question that feels increasingly urgent in modern life: what creates belonging in a world where so many people feel disconnected from one another?

The artist, cultural curator, and founder of BABËL, born Wael Mechri Yver, has built his work around music, movement, and human connection. His story moves between France and Tunisia, Paris and New York, Ibiza and beyond. Yet WAÏ’s deeper subject has never been geography alone. It is community. It is the strange and powerful moment when strangers stop feeling separate and begin to move as one.

The Edge New York as a Stage for Connection

That idea finds a fitting stage at The Edge in New York, the highest outdoor sky deck in the Western Hemisphere. As the sun settles behind the Hudson River, the glass towers of Manhattan absorb the final traces of daylight. Gradually, office lights flicker on, while ferries trace white lines across the water below. From above, New York appears less like a collection of neighborhoods and more like a living organism, illuminated and in constant motion.

Meanwhile, preparations are underway. In just a few hours, music will fill the space. Soon, strangers will gather. Some will arrive with friends, while others will come alone. Yet, by the end of the night, many of them will be moving beneath the same rhythm, connected by a shared experience.

For WAÏ, however, this is not simply nightlife. It is a form of social architecture.

Between France, Tunisia, Paris and New York

“I grew up between worlds,” he says. “French and Tunisian. European and African. Paris, New York, Ibiza.”

For much of his life, he viewed that condition as a disadvantage. The experience of never fully belonging to one place can create a quiet sense of displacement. There is always another culture, another perspective, another version of yourself emerging in response to your surroundings. Many people spend their lives searching for a fixed identity. WAÏ eventually discovered that his identity existed precisely in the spaces between them.

The realization did not arrive immediately.

As a child, frequent moves meant new schools, unfamiliar classrooms, and the anxiety of entering a room where everyone else already knew one another. Like many people who grow up between cultures, he became an observer. He learned to read social dynamics. He learned how communities formed. Most importantly, he learned how they excluded.

Music as a Universal Meeting Point

Then there was music.

He remembers standing in rooms filled with strangers and watching something remarkable happen. A song would begin, and the invisible boundaries between people would slowly dissolve. Differences in language, background, age, and social status suddenly felt less important than the shared experience unfolding in front of them.

For WAÏ, that discovery became a lifelong language. Music was not only sound. It was a meeting point.

“I remember standing in a room full of strangers and watching the music dissolve all the invisible walls between them,” he says. “Nobody had to explain anything. Everybody understood.”

The observation would become foundational to everything that followed.

Music, after all, occupies a curious place within human culture. Unlike language, it does not require translation, and unlike politics, it rarely demands agreement. A rhythm can communicate something instinctively understood long before it is intellectually processed. It reaches people through the body first.

For WAÏ, music became evidence that another form of belonging was possible.

From La Sorbonne to BABËL

Long before he stepped behind a DJ booth or entered the studio as a recording artist, he was creating environments where people could come together. While studying law at La Sorbonne in Paris, he began organizing events and parties. On paper, the pairing seems unlikely. One world was governed by rules, systems, and institutions. The other thrived on emotion, spontaneity, and energy.

Yet both were ultimately concerned with the same question: how human beings coexist.

After years spent in strict educational environments, nightlife represented freedom. It offered a laboratory for observing human behavior in real time. WAÏ became fascinated not simply by music but by its effect on people. He watched rooms transform, strangers become friends, and moments of collective joy emerge from seemingly ordinary circumstances.

At the time, he could not have known that those observations would eventually evolve into a global community.

BABËL and the Power of Shared Rhythm

Founded in 2013, BABËL emerged from an idea that feels both ancient and surprisingly contemporary. Its name references the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, traditionally understood as a tale of fragmentation. Humanity, united by a common language, attempts to build something extraordinary together. Communication breaks down. People scatter. The project collapses.

Most people remember the story as a warning.

WAÏ saw it as an opportunity.

“The original story fascinated me because it’s really a story about separation,” he explains. “I always felt music was the answer to that story.”

Music as a Response to Disconnection

The irony is difficult to ignore. We live in perhaps the most connected period in human history. Today, technology allows us to communicate instantly across continents. Likewise, we can access information from almost anywhere on earth. At the same time, social media platforms have created unprecedented visibility into the lives of others. Yet despite this constant connectivity, meaningful human connection often remains elusive.

And yet loneliness continues to rise.

Many of the traditional spaces where people once gathered have disappeared or weakened. Religious participation has declined in many parts of the world. Civic organizations have diminished. Communities have become increasingly transient. People are connected to everyone and, at times, feel close to no one.

BABËL emerged as a response to this cultural condition.

What began as a series of events evolved into something larger: a community built around the belief that music could create common ground across differences. Its gatherings attracted people from different countries, professions, cultures, and backgrounds. The dance floor became a temporary meeting place where identity remained important but ceased to be divisive.

In many ways, BABËL reflects the reality of contemporary life itself. Migration, globalization, and cultural exchange have produced generations of people who no longer fit neatly into traditional categories. They belong to multiple places at once. They carry several histories simultaneously. Their identities are layered rather than singular.

WAÏ understands that experience intimately.

Perhaps that is why the community he created resonates so deeply with others navigating similar questions.

GOSPËL in SoHo: A Home for the BABËL Community

The same instinct informed the creation of GOSPËL in SoHo in 2017. New York nightlife was undergoing a subtle transformation. The era of oversized clubs and extravagant spectacle had begun to lose some of its appeal. Increasingly, people seemed to crave something more intimate.

WAÏ remembers those early nights vividly.

The room was smaller. Conversations mattered. Music remained central, but it was not the only reason people stayed. Guests arrived expecting a typical downtown nightlife experience and instead discovered something that felt unexpectedly personal. There was a sense of familiarity, of recognition, of community.

“GOSPËL wasn’t designed as a venue,” he says. “It was designed as a home for the BABËL community.”

The distinction reveals much about his philosophy.

A venue offers entertainment.

A home offers belonging.

What made GOSPËL memorable was not simply its music programming but the atmosphere it cultivated. In a city famous for its speed, ambition, and anonymity, it created space for people to slow down and connect. The experience felt less like a transaction and more like a gathering.

Music, Ritual and Human Presence

These ideas frequently surface when WAÏ speaks about music. He often describes it in terms that extend beyond performance or nightlife. Words like ritual, presence, spirituality, and healing appear repeatedly in conversation.

For some, those concepts may seem unusual within contemporary club culture. For WAÏ, they are inseparable.

Historically, music and dance were never merely forms of entertainment. They were central components of celebration, ceremony, storytelling, and collective identity. Communities gathered around rhythm long before they gathered around screens.

“I don’t see celebration and consciousness as opposites,” he says. “For thousands of years, music and dance were part of how people connected with each other and connected with something bigger than themselves.”

It is a perspective that feels particularly relevant today.

As digital life occupies an increasing share of human attention, physical gathering begins to acquire new significance. Presence itself becomes valuable. Eye contact becomes meaningful. Shared experiences become memorable precisely because they cannot be replicated through a screen.

Liberation: WAÏ Steps Into His Own Voice

These themes became even more personal with the release of Liberation, WAÏ’s debut EP.

For years, he had focused on supporting other artists, creating platforms and opportunities for emerging talent. Through BABËL, he helped cultivate communities and champion musicians whose careers would later flourish. Yet eventually, another realization emerged.

He had something of his own to say.

The release of Liberation was not driven by strategy or market timing. It was the culmination of a much more internal process.

“I think I had to earn it,” he says. “Not in terms of success, but in terms of truth.”

The title itself reveals the emotional journey behind the project. Liberation was less about external achievement than internal permission. It represented freedom from the belief that artistic expression must be delayed until some future moment of readiness.

“From the version of myself that was always preparing to be seen instead of actually being seen,” he explains.

It is a sentiment that resonates far beyond music.

Many people spend years refining themselves for a future audience, waiting until they feel accomplished enough, confident enough, or validated enough to fully express who they are. The danger, of course, is that preparation can become permanent.

Liberation marked the moment WAÏ stopped waiting.

The music reflects that evolution. Built around live drums, soulful electronic textures, and global influences, it feels less concerned with trends than with emotional honesty. Rhythm remains central, but so does vulnerability. The work carries the imprint of someone no longer interested in performing a role and more interested in revealing something genuine.

Human Connection in the Age of AI

That commitment to humanity may be what makes WAÏ’s perspective particularly compelling at this moment in history.

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of generating images, music, writing, and content, many artists are asking what remains uniquely human.

WAÏ’s answer is immediate.

“A live drummer. A voice cracking with emotion. Eye contact. Sweat. Presence,” he says. “AI can generate content, but it cannot generate humanity.”

His observation points toward a larger cultural shift. The more synthetic experiences become, the more valuable authentic ones may feel. Imperfection begins to matter. Vulnerability becomes an asset rather than a liability. Human connection transforms from an expectation into a luxury.

Perhaps this explains why people continue to gather around music despite endless alternatives competing for their attention.

Music offers something algorithms cannot.

It creates a shared present.

Belonging Beyond Borders

As New York’s skyline darkens and the first notes begin to echo across The Edge, the crowd gradually moves closer together. Conversations soften. Phones disappear. The rhythm takes hold.

For a few hours, the city below fades into the background.

Watching the scene unfold, it becomes clear that WAÏ’s story is not ultimately about nightlife, nor even about music. At its core, it is a search for belonging in an age defined by movement. His work suggests that identity does not have to be fixed to be meaningful. It can shift, expand, and take shape in the spaces between cultures, cities, and people.

Belonging, perhaps, is not a place at all. It is neither anchored in Paris nor Tunis, nor defined by New York nor Ibiza.

It may be something more temporary, more instinctive, and more alive: the moment when strangers gather around a shared rhythm and recognize something of themselves in one another.

For a fleeting moment, under the glow of a city that never stops moving, that possibility feels not only beautiful but entirely real.

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