hen you slot this into your CD player the music that springs from the speakers sounds at first to be straightforward old timey Appalachian. "Cluck Old Hen", which begins proceedings, could be something that was recorded on a Virginia porch after the neighbors had dropped round with their fiddles and mandolins. What makes this a little more unusual is that two of the neighbors just happen to be Nepali musicians who play sarangi (a Himalayan fiddle) and madal, a wooden hand drum. This multicultural aspect becomes far more obvious on the next two tracks, "Sita Rani Bonai Ma (Queen Sita in the Forest)" and "Deri Phul Paareko (So Many Eggs)", which are both down-home Himalayan mountain tunes sung by Nepali singers. Traditional Nepali they may be, but they still have a pretty strong Appalachian ring to them.

What comes as a surprise is the similarity between some of the tunes regardless of the tradition they stem from. As the sleeve notes observe, "Going Across The Sea", a traditional Appalachian fiddle tune, bears quite an uncanny resemblance to "Deri Phul Paareko", the preceding track. OK, it is easy to understand how some West African music resembles US delta blues and vice-versa but to my knowledge there has never been much musical cross-fertilization between the Himalaya Mountains and Appalachia—or the latter music's roots in Celtic lands. Maybe it is simply that mountain musicians the world over bow down to the same muse?

The Mountain Music Project does well to show these similarities in style, and this nicely executed selection of tunes demonstrates warm, relaxed playing from all concerned. Not only group performances either. Solo pieces like "Das Avatar (Ten Faces of God)" played on sarangi, and "Going Across the Sea", with just fiddle and vocals, complement the ensemble pieces beautifully and help the flow of the musical narrative.

One thing: will the sarangi ever become a bone-fide Appalachian instrument? It is, after all, just a lump of wood with strings attached like any home-made fiddle. Stranger things have happened: the Indian sitar was successfully adopted for pop music by the Beatles' George Harrison, and Greek bouzoukis have been strumming along to Irish folk music for decades now. Speaking of the Emerald Isle, the final track, "Paina Khabara (No Message from You)", another traditional Nepali song, actually sounds quite strikingly Irish despite its Himalayan origin. The Irish influence is already there in Appalachian music, of course, but maybe it takes outsiders—Nepali musicians for example—to bring it to the surface?

The Mountain Music Project is themed as a 'musical odyssey' and for those interested there is also a film available that documents the Himalayan journey of Tara Linhardt and Danny Knicely, two of the principal musicians behind this recording.