A Musical Patchwork, Rather Than a Melting Pot

When Clay Ross moved to New York City in 2002, he encountered people from all over the world during jam sessions at the popular jazz clubs.

“It was like a United Nations of talent,” says the South Carolina native, who moved to the city to pursue a jazz career. After learning where he grew up, “people would often say, ‘Oh, you must really know a lot about American folk music and country music,’ because they had this idea about what it means to be from the American South.”

But there’s a lot more to Ross than that first impression. The guitarist and vocalist spent 10 years studying music from Brazil and Latin America, during which he founded the group Matuto. He’s also won two Grammys with his group Ranky Tanky, which focuses on Gullah music of the southeastern Sea Islands.

In 2019, those years of conversations about cultural assumptions and expectations took shape into something new when Ross founded the American Patchwork Quartet. This collective of musicians reinterprets American folk tunes through their varied cultural backgrounds and musical training. And on September 13 at 7:30 pm, the group will perform in Finney Chapel as part of the Artist Recital Series.

“This project is an effort to challenge some of our stereotypes around American identity and authenticity,” Ross says. “That does seem to be top of mind in the culture today, with all the conversations around immigration we are currently having.”

The four core members of the group are Ross, classical Indian vocalist Falu (Falguni Shah), bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and drummer Clarence Penn. But for live performances, Ross is often joined by a rotating cast. For their Oberlin appearance, he and Penn will take the stage with vocalist and violinist Harini (Rini) Raghavan and bassist Moto Fukushima.

Raghavan, born in India and trained in the Carnatic tradition, and Fukushima, originally from Japan, “struck me right away as the level of artists that I would wanna collaborate with for this project,” Ross says. The two both met Ross in New York City, which is home base for both him and the Quartet.

Of course, the group also does plenty of traveling, with tour dates this fall scheduled everywhere from Oregon to Kentucky to Maine. At their Oberlin stop, Ross says audiences can expect to hear plenty of selections from the group’s eponymous album, which was nominated for a 2024 Grammy. 

That includes the group’s take on songs like “Shenandoah,” “Beneath the Willow,” and “Wayfaring Stranger.” For the audience, these familiar tunes “give you something to anchor your understanding of the music and to contextualize what we're doing when we create a unique version of a song,” Ross says. 

Potential additions to the setlist include some of the 12 new songs the group is currently workshopping. “Our last record is deep and thoughtful and brooding, because we’re dealing with some heavy subject matter,” Ross says. But for this next collection, “we want to find songs that can articulate the joy that is shared across cultures and bring that out in our concerts.”

In addition to the performance, the quartet will lead a number of workshops at the Birenbaum, including an introduction to Indian classical music led by Raghavan. Ross will lead a songwriting workshop in addition to a career talk based around his online course, Compose Your Career.

“I’ve watched too many really talented people struggle to make ends meet,” he says. “I want to help empower artists to not only be the best musicians that they can be, but also to realize their potential as a professional.”

Creating one’s career takes active work, as does running a group like the American Patchwork Quartet. “I didn’t want this project to come across as, “Oh, look at this utopian situation we created across cultures,” Ross says. “There’s a lot of trial and error that has to happen before we land on something that satisfies all the different perspectives in the group.”

This idea of acknowledging their differences to embrace their commonalities is part of why the Quartet prefers the metaphor of the patchwork, rather than the more common American “melting pot.”

”We don't wanna melt together,” Ross says. “We want to be joined and we want to be united, but we also want to maintain the integrity of what we bring and who we are.”

Concert Details

American Patchwork Quartet
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Oberlin College Finney Chapel
90 N. Professor St.Oberlin, OH 44074

Tickets:
$35 Public | $30 OC Staff/Faculty/Alumni, Seniors, Military | $10 Students

Concert tickets are available online and by phone at 800-371-0178. Patrons may also purchase them in person between noon and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, at Oberlin College's Central Ticket Service, located at 67 N. Main Street, in the lobby of the Eric Baker Nord Performing Arts Complex.

Free Artist Recital Series tickets for enrolled Oberlin College and Conservatory students are available through the Claim Your Seat program, made possible through the generosity of Richard ’62 and Linda ’62 Clark.   

Learn more about the Arts at Oberlin.

This program is proudly supported by Ideastream Public Media, official media partner of the Artist Recital Series.

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Stephanie Manning ’23 completed her bassoon performance degree while finding her way into journalism as a classical music critic. She recently returned to Cleveland after finishing a graduate diploma in journalism at Concordia University in Montreal. Her writing has appeared in The Montreal Gazette, Early Music America, and ClevelandClassical.com.