Gabbie McGee

About Gabbie McGee

International Jazz Vocalist | Songwriter | Jazz Preservationist | Cultural Curator | Author | Nonprofit Leadership

Gabbie McGee is an international jazz vocalist, songwriter, jazz preservationist, cultural curator, author, and nonprofit leader whose work lives at the intersection of music, education, storytelling, faith, and cultural preservation.

Mississippi Roots. Global Sound.

A proud native of Greenville, Mississippi, Gabbie was raised in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, where music was never simply entertainment. It was memory, ministry, testimony, and survival. Raised under the loving guidance of her grandparents and deeply rooted in church life, Gabbie grew up surrounded by faith, family, and community. The church became one of her first classrooms, and music became one of her earliest languages.

Mississippi, long recognized as the birthplace of The Blues, gave Gabbie more than a hometown. It gave her a cultural inheritance. The sounds of Gospel, Blues, and Jazz became living archives of the Black American experience, preserving joy, struggle, faith, resilience, and history through song. Gabbie’s love for jazz began in an unexpected place: the library.  As a young girl, she discovered the voices of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Nina Simone through library collections that opened her imagination to worlds beyond her own. Those early experiences planted a lifelong belief that libraries, stories, and music have the power to shape identity, preserve culture, and change lives.

The Artist

For more than two decades, Gabbie has used her gifts as an artist and storyteller to build bridges between generations and communities through music. With two independent albums, Certified Soul starring Gabbie McGee and Mississippi’s Daughter, she has become known for powerful vocals and emotionally rich songwriting that blends jazz, gospel, blues, and soul into a sound that honors tradition while remaining deeply personal.  Her song Mississippi’s Daughter earned BMI Independent Songwriter recognition, and her artistry has received honors including the Belk Modern Southern Music Award and the Mississippi Arts Council Artist of the Year Award.

Whether performing on stage, in communities, or through educational spaces, Gabbie views music as more than performance. She sees it as a way to preserve memory, create connection, and tell stories that matter.

Film, Television & Creative Work

Gabbie’s creative work extends beyond the stage. She has appeared in the Emmy Award-winning HBO film Bessie and the Academy Award-nominated Hidden Figures. She has contributed original music for television and film projects including TV One’s Rickey Smiley For Real and wrote, produced, and performed Turn on the Lights for the remake of Avenging Angels. Her work across film, television, music, and live performance reflects a commitment to storytelling that reaches people wherever they are.

Global Jazz Conservatory

Today, Gabbie’s work has expanded into a larger mission through the founding of Global Jazz Conservatory, a nonprofit organization dedicated to Jazz Preservation through Education, Invocation, and Collaboration. The organization was created to preserve and advance the cultural legacy of Jazz, Gospel, and Blues while empowering emerging artists and connecting communities around the world through educational and artistic experiences. For Gabbie, preserving Jazz, Gospel, and Blues is not simply about remembering the past. It is about protecting the sound, spirit, and stories that helped shape Black American culture.

These traditions carry the language of resilience, faith, creativity, resistance, identity, and hope. They tell the story of a people whose contributions transformed not only American music, but American culture itself.

Jazz Lives in the Library

Launching under Global Jazz Conservatory is its first flagship initiative, Jazz Lives in the Library, an immersive national edu-tainment experience designed to reintroduce audiences to jazz through live performance, storytelling, literacy, and interactive learning.  More than a concert series, Jazz Lives in the Library creates transformative spaces where music and education meet.  Through performances, workshops, conversations, and innovative learning experiences, participants discover the roots of jazz, explore its influence on American culture, and gain a deeper understanding of the communities, struggles, triumphs, and stories that shaped the music.

The initiative seeks to bring audiences back into libraries as vibrant cultural gathering spaces while creating opportunities for students, families, educators, artists, and communities to engage with jazz in meaningful ways. At its core, the initiative exists to honor legacy, educate communities, and ignite future generations of artists, creators, and cultural stewards.

Preservation, Partnership & Purpose

As both a performer and preservationist, Gabbie believes jazz is more than music. It is a living record of resilience, creativity, faith, and the Black American experience. Through Global Jazz Conservatory and Jazz Lives in the Library, she is building pathways for collaboration among libraries, schools, educators, cultural institutions, artists, philanthropists, and community partners who share a commitment to preserving the sounds and stories that shape our collective future.

Author

Gabbie is also the author of How the Fish Rots: A Modern-Day Parable, her debut novel and the first installment in a thought-provoking series exploring faith, family, leadership, healing, forgiveness, and the cycles that shape our lives. For Gabbie, storytelling has always been deeply connected to faith. Raised in church and grounded in biblical teaching, she was inspired by the way Jesus used parables to communicate profound truths through everyday experiences.

Through How the Fish Rots, she seeks to follow the leadership of Christ, drawing inspiration from the way He used parables to reveal deeper truths about leadership, accountability, brokenness, grace, and healing. Her writing invites readers to see themselves within the story, ask difficult questions, confront unhealthy cycles, and discover hope in places where restoration may seem impossible.

To Gabbie, stories are more than entertainment. They are mirrors, conversations, and opportunities for transformation.

Meet the Characters. Follow the Journey…

Join the How the Fish Rots community on Instagram for character spotlights, story insights, exclusive updates, and a front-row seat to the audiobook process.

The Heart of the Work

Whether through music, literature, education, or cultural experiences, Gabbie remains committed to using every gift placed in her hands to leave people, communities, and culture better than she found them. Her work is rooted in Mississippi, shaped by faith, carried by song, and devoted to preserving the cultural legacy that continues to tell the story of Black America in the Deep South , then and now.