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Book Review: ‘The Final Revival of Opal & Nev’ by Dawnie Walton

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton reexamines the trials and tribulations of a fictional 1970s soul rock band fronted by a White British man and an Black American woman who see their rise decline during a racial riot at a major concert. Marked with exquisite detail, the story trips up on telling multiple perspectives to the point it’s difficult to connect with the many characters and their worlds.

Sunny Shelton is a music journalist and the daughter of Jimmy Curtis, a drummer who was fatally beaten during a 1971 concert featuring the top talent from up-and-coming label Rivington Records. What sparked the melee was the conflict between Opal & Nev, an interracial soul rock group, and the Bond Brothers, a Southern White band who brought the Confederate flag on stage. Opal, a Black woman from Detroit who summered in Alabama when she was young, hated that the Bond Brothers had the audacity to bring this oft-perceived offensive symbol of oppression on stage. The history of how the concert went south becomes fascination for Sunny who revisits all the players decades later to write a book about the events that led to her father’s untimely death. And the fact that Opal was having an affair with Sunny’s father at the time of the concert blurs the emotions of Sunny’s journalism as she tries to revive a music magazine as editor in chief.

The book is packed with details that the story of Opal & Nev feels authentic. The story focuses on this band, but the story comes full circle with the band’s influence on the deadly concert that becomes part of music history on the level of Woodstock. The details also become problematic where the characters become sidelined by telling their stories to Sunny, who as a narrator fades in the background but reappears toward the end as she pieces who was at fault for her father’s death. The plot is reminiscent to Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, but in that masterpiece the journalist with the dead father and the Hollywood actress are the only perspectives the reader receives with their stories intertwining at the end as well. In Evelyn Hugo, the characters’ truths flow well with the same story backdrop of a journalist’s interview process highlighting an icon’s journey where in Opal & Nev that technique fails especially with the characters’ truths changing almost every page, so a character’s thought process gets amputated by another character’s thought process.

Opal is supposed to be the main character, but when the story is not told from her point-of-view, it seems like a loss for the reader to really get to know how magical she seems to be. She is presented to us as this badass Black female singer struggling to become a star amid the civil rights movement who has elements of Betty Davis or Tina Turner, overshadowed by a male musician but finds her voice. But her voice is misconstrued when she tries to plot revenge on the Bond Brothers and destroy the Confederate flag at a high-profile concert. This part of the story feels all too real of a Black woman trying to raise awareness about racial insensitivity yet is the scapegoat for the disaster that results from the explosive anger.

Overall, the novel features an extraordinary fictional music saga, but the characters contributing to the story get lost in the shuffle of a pretend journalistic venture. The elaborateness of the fake historical account can be awe-inspiring as well as destructive to the story’s resonance.




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music reviews what's lit

Halsey’s Poems May Dive Deeper into Her Biracial Identity

2019 AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS.® - Hosted by Ciara and broadcasting live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, Nov. 24 at 8:00 p.m. EST, on ABC. (ABC/Image Group LA) HALSEY

Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Halsey announced she will have a poetry book come out later this year called I Would Leave Me If I Could. With the poems hitting shelves on Nov. 10, will it touch on race and her fight to be understood as a biracial woman?

Halsey’s poetry collection will explore “longing, love, and the nuances of bipolar disorder.” Publisher Simon & Schuster describes the book as:

In this debut collection, Halsey bares her soul. Bringing the same artistry found in her lyrics, Halsey’s poems delve into the highs and lows of doomed relationships, family ties, sexuality, and mental illness. More hand grenades than confessions, these autobiographical poems explore and dismantle conventional notions of what it means to be a feminist in search of power.

The “family ties” part looks promising for Halsey to share her story on being half-Black and half-White and the criticisms she received about her racial identity while famous.

In an August 2017 Playboy interview, Halsey said she was “White-passing” and that she has “never tried to control anything about black culture.” At first, it sounded like a Rachel Dolezal situation until she cleared up that her father is Black and her mother is White and that her light complexion on first impression does not show her Blackness.

After she emphasized her biracial identity, she complained about hotels in 2018 for having toiletries that “entirely alienates people of color.” She goes on to say she “can’t use this perfumed watered down white people shampoo.” The hair care industry still marks products for “normal hair,” meaning it’s designed for the hair of most White people, for example.

She quickly corrected those who said she is White and didn’t believe racism exists in the hotel toiletry business with clarifying again that she is biracial. Months later, she revealed a photo of herself in her natural curls, where again she faced attacks from fans who didn’t know her biracial identity.

Over the past few weeks, Halsey has been sharing content surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement and the latest protests by supporting Black artists and activists on Twitter and Instagram. She even participated in a protest in Los Angeles which she shares in a post on June 1 where she treated protestors hit with rubber bullets and tear gas with a massive first aid kit. The post has 1.5 million likes.

Halsey joins other singer-poets such as Jhené Aiko, the author of the poetry collection 2Fish, and Lana Del Rey, who plans to release her poetry collection and spoken word album Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass later this year.

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music reviews what's lit

Mariah Carey Talks Forthcoming Memoir, Writing Songs With Women

Mariah Carey constantly touted her memoir in an in-depth interview with Variety as the entertainment publication honored the songstress in its Power of Women edition.

When asked about the events that had led up to her 2001 “emotional and physical breakdown” coinciding with poor reviews of her debut film Glitter and her inherent love for Christmas that spawned a forever holiday hit and album, Mariah said: “All of this to be revealed in the book, by the way, which I’m obsessed with writing right now. It’s so cathartic.”

With the special edition focused on women, Mariah discussed the role of women in her career, especially in the beginning where she felt there weren’t enough young female artists like her as she was surrounded by a lot of men in the music industry. To stay on top of the ambitious career of her dreams, she said she learned how to play the game.

“It’s sad that we’re still playing games at this point,” she said in the video interview. She then hinted at sexual harassment and the current #MeToo landscape. “And as a woman, yeah, I’ve been in situations where I’m looking at stuff now going, ‘Omigod, this happened to me, that happened to me.’ I totally relate to this woman’s experience, but I didn’t necessarily go along with it in a complete way, but I was like, ‘Oh, this person just like tried to have a moment with me’—without being too specific—in the studio, in the dark. Thank God, I was like, ‘Ha ha ha ha,’ and laughed my way out of it. That’s just my mechanism that I turn on. So these things have happened to me, yeah, but I really respect the women who have come forward and paved the way, so that the newer generation of women don’t have to deal with this and know they don’t have to deal with it.”

She said she felt isolated coming up in the industry, where her eponymous album came out in 1990 when she was 20 years old. Now, with more female artists in the game across the age spectrum, she said she finds ways to work with them.

“I love writing with other women, and it’s something that’s newer thing for me. People like Bibi Bourelly and Priscilla Renea, like new young writers I really enjoy working with because it’s a different energy and they may or may not have been inspired by me, and I thrive on it. Even some of my favorite songs on Butterfly, which is one of my favorite albums and it represents coming into a new era in my life and finding my own freedom as a woman. I remember one of the sessions was with Missy Elliott. We just had the best time working together and writing together.”

Mariah also goes into how the media compared her with Whitney Houston.

“What has to change in our industry the most is the pitting of women against each other. There was the situation when I started, ‘Oh, her and Whitney. Let’s put them against each other’ and blah blah. We didn’t know each other, and she was one of the greatest of all time. Then we finally did a duet together that won an Oscar. We had the best time working together. It was female camaraderie. We both got it. We’re both like, ‘She doesn’t hate me.’ We’re actually having this great time together and laughing. And this is the most fun I have ever had working alone ever. I think camaraderie with women you respect is a huge deal.”

The Mixed-ish theme singer and songwriter said her book will begin with her humble beginnings as a biracial child in New York and follow the highs and lows of her record-breaking career. Explaining she had recently extended her memoir, Mariah said to look for it in the latter half of 2020.