Josh Middleton & Rasika Ajotikar

Event Information

Rasika and Josh met in London, a city that thrives as a melting pot of cultures. Their music both breaks with and draws upon tradition. Using the grammar and vocabulary of forms such as folk, classical, and semi-classical music of South Asia—and, in the case of the accordion, the many and diverse techniques derived from the various traditional musics that Josh has studied, from Celtic to Bulgarian Folk music—while also bending and reshaping them. Instead, they explore the gaps, the in-between spaces, and the surprising connections: how voice and accordion converse, how their sounds meet, what meanings emerge in their open and curiosity-driven encounters.

The aim of this project is to answer the question: how can we trust our voices, our skills, and our instincts to what we want to say, without the pressure of proving ourselves within a tradition and its tightly-bound purist norms? And how do we have an honest and authentic musical conversation between artists of different backgrounds which moves away from orientalism, gimmick, and the burden of contentious concepts like “fusion” or “world” music?

Rasika is a singer trained in the Hindustani music tradition and has been exploring diverse genres and styles over the past two decades. She is also an ethnomusicologist and currently a Junior Professor at the University of Hildesheim, Germany.

Josh is an accordionist and composer, specialising in European folk styles from Celtic to Eastern European folk. He is the UK's leading Klezmer accordionist, and works in theatre as a musical director.