The unassuming yet appetising subtitle of this disc is A Musical Odyssey From Appalachia To Himalaya. It's not a fusion music experience as such, and certainly not one of those "let's throw it all together and see what happens" experiments, but instead it's more in the way of an exploration of parallel experiences of musicians from Virginia and Nepal.

The Mountain Music Project's mission is to encourage the preservation of musical traditions in rural and under-served communities throughout the world, with a special focus on mountainous regions. Its activities include cultural exchanges and expeditions, multimedia documentation, and supporting local cultural preservation organizations, notably musicians in Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand, Burma (and wherever the songs carry them!). This particular release stems from the MMP's 2006 travels to Nepal, where the participants sought out folk musicians of the Gandharba caste, whose music's homemade instruments and raw quality reminded them much of oldtime Appalachian music.

And when you spot Tim O'Brien's name prominent among the credits and author of the introductory liner note, that particular angle can indeed be seen as the key, for in that respect the project can be viewed as another aspect of Tim's personal odyssey, his eternal fascination with the trans-continental cross-currents, both in the relocation of the old songs and tunes down the years and across the oceans and the realisation of just how much common ground exists between ostensibly disparate musical cultures. This is illustrated through what might in one respect be heard as Transatlantic-Session-styled performances of15 items in total: eight are US traditional or thereabouts (a couple of Stephen Foster numbers), while the remainder are of Nepalese origin (four traditional pieces and three original songs by musicians from the gathering).

The project's been coordinated and arranged by its producer Danny Knicely, and recordings were made both in the Appalachian region of the US and in the Himalayan region of Nepal, featuring legendary musicians from both countries. In addition to Tim, the nucleus of the US contingent comprises Mark Schatz, Danny Knicely and Curtis Burch, with Aaron and Matthew Olwell in tow, and there are also guest appearances from Abigail Washburn (a lovely duet with Tim on My Home Is In The Blue Ridge Mountains), Tony Trischka (banjo on Old Joe Clark) and Riley Baugus (who contributes idiomatic vocals to Little Liza Jane and the Old Regular Baptist hymn The Day Is Past And Gone).

The central thesis - in its most simplistic form - has to be that the Appalachian and Nepali traditional musics have more in common than we might think, and the most obvious instances are brought into sharp focus with the disc's consecutive placings of songs where the melodic contours are surprisingly similar - Going Across The Sea is paired with the Nepali song So Many Eggs, and Sally Anne with Resham Firiri. But the cross-pollination extends beyond the actual material into the performances themselves; many of these have traditional Nepalese instruments playing perfectly happily alongside their American counterparts and sounding pretty natural. The plangent tones of the Nepalese sarangi (four-stringed fiddle, interestingly employing similar intonation to some Appalachian cross-tunings and played vertically like a cello) complement the western fiddle, while the bansuri flute parallels the Irish wooden variety; mandos, dobro and guitar provide suitable embellishments and the madal drum is the principal source of percussion. Worry not, for it's all very accessible to western ears.

The joyous ensemble rendition of Oh! Susanna is the only "contrivance", and then only in the sense that it incorporates a Nepali translation of the lyric, but even this fun interpolation doesn't sound out of place in the context of the whole enterprise, which amounts to nothing less than a vibrant and entertaining instance of fertile cross-cultural exchange.