Uno Zingaro di Atlante Con un Fiore a New York

N.A.D.M.A. stands for Natural Arkestra Da Maya Alta, who were a free jazz / improvising outfit working in Italy in the 1970s. Uno Zingaro Di Atlante Con Un Fiore A New York (A Gypsy From Atlas With A Flower In New York) was the only album they released during that decade, and it’s an excellent example of the intersection of multiple genres – free jazz and free improvisation, of course, but there are also touches of folk music in here, which was a regular occurrence in the Italian underground, and they’re clearly in touch with histories of the avant-garde, both academic and otherwise, probably thanks to various members’ visual arts backgrounds. Some of the players would go on to work with legends such as Don Moye and Mario Schiano, but the key to N.A.D.M.A. was subsuming experience and ambition into group sound; Uno Zingaro is a great example of such interactive playing, and its sense of space is particularly impressive, even when the members work up a collective head of steam. Check out the Alga Marghen releases by Quartetto and Mosconi/Klok/Bonora for further revelations.