The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

by Dawnie Walton

See, this is what I say about America—we always gotta be assigning shit, always labeling it and stuffing it in a box. Always dictating who’s allowed to own what. But end of the day, that don’t have nothing to do with the music, you dig? The music is fire and passion and soul, and however you express it is how you express it.

Nev used to play at being different, but I don’t know if he ever understood what being different really means. That the regular people like to beat back what’s different, because it scares them half to death.

And when the laughs run out, you can’t suddenly ask in the middle of the show, What happened? What you mean, What happened? That’s the monster you made.

From this point on, I knew, I wanted to curate this story standing on the premise that the lives and legacies of Black men, like my father, cannot be reduced to the awful shit white men do to them. That the voices of Black women like Opal should not be discounted or diminished in deference to those who have hijacked our shine whenever it suits.

I have no argument with faith, understand, so long as it helps one to cope with the slings and arrows of life while keeping its hands outside of my pockets—and