Please join us for the second Neighborhood Speaker Series on Thursday, April 27th, featuring local author, composer, and jazz historian, Allen Lowe. Lowe will be speaking about his latest book Turn Me Loose, White Man; Or: Appropriating Culture: How to Listen to American Music 1900 - 1960. The program is free and open to the public. It begins at 7 pm and the Best Video Coffee Bar will be open.

Allen Lowe is a composer, musician, music historian, and sound restoration specialist. He plays alto saxophone, C-melody saxophone, and guitar and has recorded with Julius Hemphill, Marc Ribot, Roswell Rudd, Don Byron, Doc Cheatham, and David Murray. He has also produced a series of historical projects on American popular song, jazz, and the blues.

He wrote American Pop from Minstrel to Mojo (a survey of American music from 1896 to 1946);That Devilin' Tune: A Jazz History 1900-1950; God Didn't Like It: Electric Hillbillies, Singing Preachers, and the Beginning of Rock and Roll, 1950-1970; and Really the Blues? A Blues History, 1893–1959. The books were accompanied by CD sets that were mastered by Lowe. He began doing freelance audio work for Rhino Records, Shout Records, Rykodisc, Sony, and Venus Records and for Michael Feinstein and Terry Gross.

Lowe lectured on musical topics and moderated panels at the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and the annual EMP Pop Conference in Seattle, Washington. He lectured for the United States Information Agency in Europe on American music history. His book Devilin' Tune was used in courses at Harvard and Yale, and entries appeared about him in the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and The Penguin Guide to Jazz on Compact Disc. There is a chapter about him in the book Bebop and Nothingness by Francis Davis.