Shuggie Otis – Inspiration Information (1974)

Learning to be anti-racist

“It’s more of a challenge for other people than it is for me. I have no issues with my identity.”
– Rashida Jones

For years, I have been mistakenly under the impression that ‘racist’ and ‘not racist’ were opposites. I’ve since realized that ‘anti-racism’ is actually the opposite of ‘racism’ & I need to do a better job of being actively anti-racist.

As a starting point, I want to commit to doing two small things every week:

1. Listen & Learn. Share resources that I’ve found helpful.
2. Amplify Black Voices. Each Wednesday, feature a Black Artist from the 1001 list.

 

So far, I’ve looked at Curtis Mayfield’s There’s No Place Like America Today, The Crusaders’ Street Life, Cypress Hill’s Cypress Hill, Cee-Lo Green’s Cee-Lo Green…Is the Soul Machine, Maxwell’s Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite, Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s, Shaka Zulu, Muddy Waters’ Hard Again, Fela Ransome-Kuti and The Africa ’70 with Ginger Baker’s Live!, and Femi Kuti’s Femi Kuti.

This week, Shuggie Otis’ Inspiration Information.

.

[Album 790/1001]

I wholeheartedly approve of albums that lend themselves to charts & graphs.

Inspiration Information, for Shuggie’s own musical multi-tasking merit (in addition to its inherent graph-ability), is no exception.

It’s an intriguing listen as some tunes have plenty of lyrics (information), others are entirely instrumental (allowing for the listener to have some time for personal reflection, or inspiration), and a couple of tracks are somewhere in between.

When he delivers over 100 lyrics in a track? Optimal information.

No lyrics whatsoever? Inspiration is optimized.

Between 1 & 100 lyrics? Inspiration & Inspiration are neatly balanced, as shown below!

.

.

.

Helpful Resources

“I am a mixture of races so I need to tell the truth or it gets confusing”
– Shuggie Otis.

It was interesting reading this feature on Shuggie Otis & also reflecting on his answer (quoted above) that he gives when someone asks him about his race.