ABSTRACT
Even though the possible social impacts of music-making for the participants in the social music projects studied in Kinshasa (DR Congo) were, at least to a certain extent, real (the new status they obtained in their society by becoming a musician, the financial and career opportunities this new identity could lead to at some point in the future, etc.), they had only very limited benefits in terms of social and material improvements in the lives of the participants. The main reason which kept these musicians working hard and continuously on their music was the pure enjoyment of making music, rather than any social or material benefit resulting from it, and throughout the research an understanding of this particular finding was sought. The most significant conclusion of this research was the fact that the intrinsic benefits of music-making turned out to be decisive in the context of the extremely difficult living circumstances of Kinshasa: for the participants in this research, the main ‘pay-off’ of their music-making was the activity itself.
