Introduction

Esatis (25) is a self-taught and engaged slam poet. Nathan-2K (30) is a gospel music guitarist. Esatis and Nathan-2K are artist names. Esatis fled the Central African Republic (CAR) in the aftermath of the 2013 coup d’état that plunged his country into a period of uncertainty and found refuge in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo). Nathan-2K grew up in war-torn Eastern Congo. In 2017 he moved to Dar es Salaam where he was offered a job in a church choir. The two artists do not know each other. Yet their life trajectories, which meet in this chapter, share similarities: both were born in the 1990s and grew up in a context of ‘neither war nor peace’ (Larmer et al, 2013); and both left their home city and made their way to an African megapolis.

Based on these two trajectories, the purpose of this chapter is threefold. First, by concentrating on trajectories within Africa, it problematises South– North migration narratives. Second, by placing the biographical trajectory of one ‘migrant’ next to that of one ‘refugee’, it questions the artificial migrant– refugee divide. Third, by focusing on personal success, rather than on vulnerability, the chapter challenges, or at least complements, images of the vulnerable refugee or migrant. The accent comes to lie on self-affirmation and dignity instead.

Even if the lives of two individuals cannot contain all the diversity and complexities of youth in Africa, a biographical approach, nevertheless, sheds light on the context of critical decision moments in these young men's life trajectories. It is by exploring these moments that a deeper understanding of how lives unfold in a constant interplay of structure and agency is brought to life. In this chapter, moreover, agency, as it shapes the personal geographies of Esatis and Nathan-2K, is understood through music. It is through music that both artists constructed a niche for themselves in Kinshasa and Dar es Salaam respectively, turning these two cities into their homes. Throughout, the chapter alludes to meaningful spaces to which Esatis and Nathan-2K contribute musically. Woven together, these spaces (which include music recording studios, cultural podia, university classrooms, churches and the digital sphere) constitute some of many layers in urban African soundscapes.