Irish Ways

Cork-born singer and songwriter Ron Kavana has been working for over six years on this magnum opus – a four-CD box with an accompanying 122-page book that sets out to tell in traditional and original music, poetry and narration the story of Ireland and its people, from prehistory to the present. He’s got a host of terrific guests with him, including such notables as Paddy Keenan, Shane McGowan, Terry Woods, Niamh Parsons, Gino Lupari and a couple of dozen more. Unfortunately, in the absence of credits for individual tracks, the punter is left to play a guessing game as to who’s doing what where. That caveat aside, Kavana’s monumental project more than succeeds in its ambitious aims.