The musical souls of two nations, Ireland and Mexico, are movingly brought to life in San Patricio, the latest international collaboration by six-time Grammy winners The Chieftains – the leading practitioners of Irish traditional music for the past four decades. The album features multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer Ry Cooder, another multiple-Grammy winner, who co-produced with The Chieftains’ Paddy Moloney. It tells the nearly forgotten story of the brave San Patricio battalion – a downtrodden group of Irish immigrant conscripts who deserted the U.S. Army in 1846 to fight on the Mexican side against the invading Yankees in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). The music blends Irish uilleann pipes, whistle and fiddles with Mexican guitars, banjo and trumpets, and the cast of singers ranges from Lila Downs and Linda Ronstadt to the extraordinary, passionate 90-year-old ranchero star, Chavela Vargas. This is music of sorrow and celebration mingled, of triumph and tragedy, which makes new musical connections in the world, not unlike new synapses in the brain, that can never be undone. Recorded in studios, as noted by Moloney, from New York to Dublin to Los Angeles, this is a new chapter in world music, songs sung “in a thousand different voices, across dreams broken and begun again….” Stunning, and not to be missed.