Arts 2019, 8, 14 11 of 16 it its common theme: songs with sometimes opposing speeches rub shoulders, echoing the musicians’ various profiles. Gradually, from a project featuring “art by migrants”, the project has transformed itself into a “transcultural creation” (Djebbari 2012), “mobilizing its cultural differences as its conscious object” (Appadurai 2001, p. 206) to raise awareness both to the various traditions brought by refugees, and to the bridges that can be built between them. The ensemble transformed itself into a band with which the musicians can identify, with a unified discourse around their musical practice. Despite the band’s name, their art is not about migration or about migrants anymore: their approach is touched by “migratory aesthetics” (Bennett 2011) mainly because the experience of migration allowed their encounter, their discovery of other musical languages, their project together. The CD encountered an obvious success: it was awarded “World Music album of the year” by the Transglobal World Music Charts in 2016;56 it received the Culture Prize from the Flemish Community in 2017; international media praised it (Al Jazeera; Froots; Songlines; BBC; Le Monde; Libération . . . ). Programmed all over Europe, the band got a warm welcome in every place where it performed. Despite the fact that the musicians cannot physically travel to their home countries, digital distribution of the album and social networks reached an audience worldwide. Proudly57 sharing the project news on their Facebook page, the musicians received hundreds of expressions of support from their compatriots. This transnational dimension of the Refugees for Refugees project is not the focus of this article, but it seems clear that people seeing their own musical cultures endangered in their countries tend to support initiatives maintaining these musical cultures elsewhere. Cabot (2016) shows how refugee voices are often silenced even—or particularly—when they are “given a space of speech”—this last expression already denying them any autonomous speaking. We saw that though communication was clearly oriented, the content of the album was totally left to the artists, resulting in songs about love, religion, politics, nature ... After all the events described earlier—organizers asking for the project without having heard a song; music used as a background for banquets—one could ask who really listened to the music? These pieces are not of exile, but the words that musicians themselves wanted to say. Some interesting self-reliance demonstrations happened unexpectedly—or not—outside the project. During the first year after the CD release, Tibetan singer Dolma Renqingi developed some musical projects featuring rock and pop repertoires. Without claiming that there is a direct link with Refugees for Refugees, we can assume that taking part to this project gave her confidence and tools to mobilize networks she had newly acquired in Belgium. Another musician of the band ran for the municipal election for the first time in 2018: again, without knowing if there is any causal link to this,58 we could suppose that playing with musicians from other backgrounds, having to cope with new language and administrative challenges, and juggle networks is something that could have been reinforced through his involvement in Refugees for Refugees. Muziekpublique’s inability to meet some of the musicians’ demands lead to some big conflicts and sometimes leavings. These departures were firstly felt as failures, but have actually led some musicians to express their agency by creating their own artistic project. 4.2. A Project Based on Skills Among the remaining musicians, several of them joined the European professional networks through this project—which would probably have happened anyway for most of them, but at a slower 56 57 58 Transglobal World Music Charts website. Available online: http://www.transglobalwmc.com/charts/best-of-2016-chart/ (accessed on 4 September 2018). Although out of reach of this article, it should be noted that “these aspects of pride should be taken seriously” (Cabot 2016, p. 18). We unfortunately did not have any interview with him about his political investment and therefore do not know if he is running for reasons related to migration, artistic or other issues.