COLA BOYY - QUIT TO PLAY CHESS

Disco was also a haven for Matthew Urango. Under the pseudonym Cola Boyy, the multi-instrumentalist released a string of bedroom-funk pop records, carving out a niche where he could fuse the grandeur of late-’70s/early-’80s club music with the emotional gooeyness and homespun charm of a kid plucking a bass guitar in a room in Oxnard, California, the seaside town where he grew up. Cola Boyy was also born with spina bifida, kyphosis, and scoliosis—he was known to refer to himself as a “disabled disco innovator”—and was as serious about his music as he was about his activism, both as a disabled person and as an Afro-Latino with an immigrant background. Cola Boyy’s second album, a collection of tightly woven, endlessly endearing, and seismically groovy songs called Quit to Play Chess