White Tears

The first half of the book sets up our hipster duo worshipping at the shrine of old black music. Deemed “more intense and authentic than anything made by white people.” Carter is a trust-fund douchebag that sports blond dreadlocks in college while DJ'ing and Seth is a “sonic geologist” riding Carter's monied coattails.

When Seth captures snippets of a song while travelling the city doing field recordings Carter matches it against a guitar riff recorded elsewhere and they fit perfectly together. The two fuzz it up and pawn it off as a long forgotten blues artist. They fabricate the name of Charlie Shaw and call the frankensteined track Graveyard Blues. When someone reaches out saying they haven't heard Charlie Shaw since 1959 things get a little crazy.

What starts off as a biting satire on cultural appropriation turns into a blues ghost story that becomes full-on Korean revenge drama. The second half goes a bit off the rails but I can't begrudge the fun Kunzru has at our hipster protagonists' expense early on.