DOTA - "In der fernsten der Ferne" - Tour 2024
Kaléko for the second time. After the great success of the first album, Dota once again focuses musically on the texts of the poetess. Mascha Kaléko began writing in Berlin in the 1920s, and from 1929 she published in daily newspapers; her early poems are pointed sketches of everyday life in Berlin dialect. She makes a name for herself, associating with the greats of the Berlin bohemian scene at the Romanische Café. In 1933, her first book “Das lyrische Stenogrammheft” is published and finds immediate acclaim. Her success as a writer abruptly ends with the Nazi takeover. As a Jew, she is no longer allowed to publish. In 1938, she leaves Berlin, but the city remains her constant point of reference. In one of her last poems Bleibtreu, she writes about the street: "Forty years ago I lived here [...] Here was my happiness. And my misery. Here my child was born. And had to leave. Here my friends visited me and the Gestapo," she concludes with the question, "What remains of that? [...] an old wound unhealed." Dota Kehr is a Berliner, writes lyrics, sings, and has been making music since 2003 with drummer Janis Görlich and guitarist Jan Rohrbach. In the meantime, they have recorded 16 albums and played countless tours in Germany and abroad. Dota hits the nerve of her time or rather several with her music that jumps and dances, pauses, leaps from the bagger lake jetty, swims and dives, down to the bottom, which is also the title of one of her most beautiful songs. She mixes folk and indietronica and occasionally allows her love for Brazilian music to shine through. Her lyrics touch through their immediacy; Dota does not speak from an ivory tower but from the people here and now and their small triumphs and great abysses, their shortcomings, attempting to find closeness and move in society. She wins the Fred Jay Award and the German Record Critics' Award, she inadvertently writes small anthems, racing bikes for all lovers in the big city, no time for the movement of climate protests. She makes record after record, always believing her best song is still in the future; she earns the title hardest touring woman in German show business, plays with her band and in a duo with Jan Rohrbach on guitar. At one of the concerts, a fan hands her a booklet, author: Mascha Kaléko. Dota is thrilled by the directness of the poems, the conciseness of the language and devises a plan to create music from the texts. She obtains permission from Kaléko's estate administrator and asks friendly songwriters if they want to participate. Everyone is enthusiastic, and so on this album, there are songs sung solely by Dota, but also duets with old and new voices from the German music scene, like Alin Coen, Hannes Wader, Max Prosa, and Konstantin Wecker. The album is released in 2020 and stays in the album charts for 8 weeks, a success. The accompanying tour only takes place in 2022 due to the pandemic, but is then celebrated even more by the audience. The fact that Dota has taken up Kaléko's poems and made songs out of them is a stroke of luck. Like Dota, Kaléko does not write about myths and distant spheres but about people; Kaléko speaks of patients in the public health system, and Dota speaks of pregnant women in the hardware store. Thus, it is not surprising that Dota found it so easy to lend her voice to these related texts. Dota and her band have given the poems an additional layer, new colors, sometimes placing them in contrast to the text, and they have achieved the feat that while listening to the songs, one never thinks of poetry accompanied by music even once. Dota has rescued the texts of Mascha Kaléko into our time; even more: they sound as if they were written now, in this form. And of course, there was more to discover in Kaléko's poetry collections, essays, mixed notes, and diary entries. Enough for a second album, again with known collaborators. This time, the music fits even better, Kaléko's texts move naturally and freely within it, sometimes in classical song form with verses and choruses, sometimes a line repeating itself conjuring until everyone has pinned the sentence on their and each other's refrigerator: "How beautiful it is to be alone." Since September 2023, DOTA has been on tour with: Dota Kehr (vocals, guitar), Janis Görlich (drums), Jan Rohrbach (guitar), Jonas Hauer (keyboards), and Maria Schneider (vibraphone, percussion, vocals). There will be songs from the two Kaléko albums and some pieces from the band with their own lyrics. Acoustic, concert-like, captivating!
Doors: 7:00 PM
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
