On a trip to Brazil, South Carolina native Clay Ross found a kinship between the folkloric music he heard there and the straightforward songs of his native Appalachia. He recorded an album to explore this relationship and titled it “Matuto” after a Brazilian slang word referring to a man from the backcountry. Ross gathered a handful of talented New York City musicians from the city’s jazz, roots, and world music scenes to bring his sound to life. Matuto (the band) plays North American folk songs like “Home Sweet Home” and “John the Revelator” over the South American rhythms Maracatu, Forró, and Coco, and vice versa. Matuto makes the lines between these divergent genres and the geographical distance between their homes blur and fade away.