The former Tati building in Barbès. If you grew up in or around Paris, you know exactly what that address carries: affordable fabric by the meter, sequined everything, three generations crowding the escalators on a Sunday, plastic bags stuffed with finds. The building closed. The neighborhood held its breath. Then the UJI moved in, and something shifted.

7.753 billion human beings on this planet, as many stories, cultures, and experiences crossing the world. Here, those stories are shared — that's the stated philosophy, and a Friday evening in May 2023 made it feel completely literal.

Rhoda Tchokokam was in the room. Art director, critic, photographer, founder of Atoubaa, the slow media dedicated to Black cultures and Black women's practices. She had just published Sensibles: une histoire du R&B français — the first serious book dedicated to French R&B as a genre in its own right, tracing its formation through transatlantic exchanges between North America, Europe, and the Caribbean, and examining how it gave a generation of Black artists a discreet but radical permission to feel, to be soft, to be seen.

The conversation was led by Marina Wilson, aka DJ Cheetah. Cameroonian-born, Paris-based, with sets built around African music classics: coupé décalé, Afrobeat, hip-hop from South Africa, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon. Resident DJ on the first two seasons of Nouvelle École (the french version of Rhythm + Flow, the Netflix rap show, you know) . A queer woman who has spent years being deliberately, consistently visible in Black LGBTQ+ Parisian spaces.

Two women, one room, one book about the music that raised us. The kind of evening where you sit down expecting a talk and leave carrying something heavier and better than when you walked in. That's the UJI. Check the programming before you visit. Then clear your whole evening.

@unionjeunesseinternationale · 2-4 Boulevard Marguerite de Rochechouart, 75018