Damiani Opus Music Ensemble-Flashback 1983 (izmez-polis,lp 26002)'

Here's a lovely little known album , by Paolo Damiani's Flashback ensemble,the stated intentions of which being to investigate the similarities/differences between Mediterranean folk music and Jazz.

A nexus of free Improv/Jazz and Italian folk idioms is' now common place .. mostly through the work of Gianluigi Trovesi, who's album 'Dances' on red records in 1985 proved to be a breakthrough  album in the vein, Paolo Damiani was also the bassist in that trio, and has played with Trovesi periodically since...both have played regularly with the Italian Instabile Orchestra.

although perhaps only intermittently successful in its stated aims,as attempts at genuine syntheses of this nature... often are the disjunctions and failure are as interesting if not more so than the syntheses.

Being a - Don Cherry-Albert Ayler,and so called world music Fanatic i fully appreciate the attempt and have always been drawn to such endeavors..

A beautiful , vibrant spirited performance which manages to come across , despite the harsh slightly glassy quality of the sound on this recording.

Other than Fresu and Schiaffini, the other performers here are unknown quantities to me,and the only other record i know well on this label is Tony Oxley's 1986 album Live at Rocella Jonica .which has been reissued on CD.
Damiani ..appears to have been prolific in the intervening years ,making records for Egea, and Splasch among others.

BTW, another Stunning example of tenuous syntheses of Free Jazz and in this case Sicilian polyphonic traditional vocal music is "New Village on the left" by Marcello Melis,an even earlier example.

for full details including personnel  click on the cover scans
Enjoy!!!