Latest Stories
Vanderbilt University Libraries hold “The John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie Collection” in Special Collections & University Archives. Dr. Robbie Fry, professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the Blair School of Music, first assigned his Global Jazz students a mapping project using the unique photographs and items in the Middle East scrapbooks of Dizzy’s 1950s US State Department Tour. This project was continued in Fall 2024 by a group of Vanderbilt Buchanan Library Fellows completing the current StoryMap. Using the archive and other sources, this project documents and contextualizes this history, the stops of the tour, and political movements of the time. Go “On Tour” with Dizzy and view the interactive StoryMap at https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5483cc3f89114cf1b2715457ab342d0d.
