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This book results from a larger research project between TU Dortmund University and the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg which started with an international conference on "Popular Music and Public Diplomacy" in 2015.We would like to thank institutions and people who made this project possible. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the US Consulate in Düsseldorf, the TU Dortmund Society of Friends, and Oxford Music & Letters provided grants that enabled us to finance the initial conference. We would also like to express our gratitude to our colleagues at the English and music departments of TU Dortmund University and the music department of the University of Oldenburg. Walter Grünzweig and Holger Noltze supported the initial conference. Our Conference Advisory Board, consisting of

The 1960s and 1970s are regarded by some historians as being particularly creative decades for jazz in Britain, when British jazz developed its own sound that was distinct from that of American jazz. While not denying that this was a creatively fruitful period in British jazz, in this paper I argue that a ‘British sound' in jazz is difficult, perhaps impossible, to define, even though some authors have referred to a sense of ‘Britishness', particularly in the work of certain musicians discussed by Ian Carr in his book Music Outside: Contemporary Jazz in Britain. Some British jazz, performed largely by white (and mostly male) musicians at this time, was influenced during the 1960s by the contribution of immigrant black musicians from South Africa and the Caribbean; at the same time, musicians such as Michael Garrick and John Surman were drawing to some extent on British folk music for inspiration. Referring to examples from the period, I suggest that although much British jazz from 1960 to 1980 was innovative and became less ‘American', development of its styles was affected by many musical, cultural and political factors. To what extent this music sounds ‘British' is debatable, but its influence has led to the pluralism of jazz styles in Britain that continues today.