Cola Boyy
Rickshaw Stop
∙
San Francisco
Thursday, April 18 at 8 pm PDT
Serves Food
Outdoor Patio
Concert Venue
Bar
Thursday, April 18 at 8 pm PDT
Serves Food
Outdoor Patio
Concert Venue
Bar
Entry Options
Details
Description
What makes him beautiful?
First of all, it’s his mix of cultures, white, black, Hispanic and Native American. Centuries linked to Colonial America. Matthew––his real name––is Scottish and Portuguese through his mother, and Chumash, African-American and Mexican through his father.
It’s also a voice, expressive, like his black grandmother’s, a singer in a hip Oxnard club in the 1940s. Music freed her, no longer having to work the land like she did, having been raised in a family of sharecroppers. Oxnard was already L.A.’s countryside at the time, a refuge for the privileged basking on the beaches of fine sand. Only steps away was the cropland that is still being cultivated today, the cradle of Cola Boyy’s Chumash ancestors. Chumash, like his hundred-year-old great-grandmother who became fond of the beautiful singer and matched her with her son for marriage. They lived happily, unaware that their descendant would take over the musical reins.
Cola Boyy’s beauty is overshadowed by his birth defect. Wings grow from his back, his spine is shaped like a snake and he has an artificial leg. When he was two years old, his parents had to make the decision for him to either be bound to a wheelchair or undergo amputation. More combative than resigned, they chose the second option. Their son is thankful for their decision and his prosthesis: “I love it coz I can walk, get around really well, that’s cool.”
Just like fellow native Oxnard musicians Madlib and Anderson .Paak, Cola Boyy comes from a mixed black and white musical background: an obvious descendant of the Ghetto Brothers, a New York-based militant black and Hispanic band that blended together rock, soul and Latino music, all while trying to bring peace to the city’s gang war. He’s also greatly inspired by the funk and disco energy of Studio 54 and the Paradise Garage club, as well as the poetry and harmonies of his ultimate idol, Paul McCartney.