Star Rating: ***

Dr Fred Freeman doesn't do things by halves. He's the man we have to thank for Burns's complete song catalogue being recorded and collated into one mammoth set, and he's doing a similar service for Robert Tannahill. So it came as no surprise that he'd travelled exhaustively through Scotland's history and combed its geography to present this picture of a multicultural society and how our pride in our hospitality has often been misplaced.

Part documentary, part concert party, and a mite lecture-like, it was rescued by songs that underlined Freeman's points. Emily Smith's fresh and engaging reading of Burns's A Slave's Lament and John Morran's typically expressive My Ain Countrie illustrated two shameful periods, the latter sung by a Scot living in exile, but there were moments that proved we can and should laugh at ourselves, too, notably Peter Nardini's merciless Larkhall, delivered with conspicuous relish by Dave Taylor.

As the us-and-them scenarios flourished - with the travellers' case made in Rod Paterson's Yellow on the Broom - it was a sobering lesson, if one that also found room for a carousing Sandy Brechin accordion feature.

Making an unscheduled appearance through their own gig being cancelled, Russell's House turned out to be an apt opening act. Here was a multicultural quartet who, if merely serviceable vocally, ran an amiable gamut from a kind of Palm Court ceilidh band to Hank Williams-style honky-tonkin' and from backwoods Americana to a belting Scottish-dance-set finale.