Dota - In der fernsten der Fernen
Mascha Kaléko begins writing in the twenties of the last century in Berlin, and from 1929 she publishes in daily newspapers, with her early poems being pointed sketches of everyday life in Berlin dialect. She makes a name for herself, mingling with the greats of the Berlin bohemian scene at the Romanisches Café. In 1933, her first book "Das lyrische Stenogrammheft" is published and receives great acclaim immediately. Her success as a writer abruptly ends with the rise of the Nazis. As a Jew, she is no longer allowed to publish. In 1938, she leaves Berlin, but the city remains her firm point of reference. In one of her last poems Bleibtreu, she writes, “Forty years ago, I lived here […] Here was my happiness at home. And my distress. 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 from Berlin, writes lyrics, sings, and has been making music with her band DOTA since 2003. They have now recorded 16 albums and played countless tours both at home and abroad. Dota captures the spirit of her time, or several at once, with her music that hops and dances, pauses, jumps off the lakeside dock, swims and dives, to the bottom, which is also the title of one of her most beautiful songs. She mixes folk and indietronica and occasionally lets her love for Brazilian music shine through. Her lyrics resonate with immediacy, as Dota does not speak from an ivory tower but from the people here and now, with their small triumphs and great abysses, their shortcomings, trying to connect, and move in society. She wins the Fred Jay Prize and the German Record Critics' Award, and she unwittingly writes small anthems, racing bike for all lovers in the big city, no time for the movement of climate protests. She produces album after album, always believing her best song is yet to come, earning the title hardest touring woman in German show business, performing with her band and in a duo with Jan Rohrbach on guitar.
At one of her concerts, a fan slips her a small book, author: Mascha Kaléko. Dota is captivated by the directness of the poems, the conciseness of the language and she plans to make 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 such as 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 tour related to it only takes place in 2022 due to the pandemic, but is celebrated all the more by the audience then.
That Dota has taken up Kaléko's poems and made songs from them is a stroke of luck. As Dota tells, Kaléko does not talk about myths and distant spheres in her texts, but about people; Kaléko speaks of statutory health patients while Dota speaks of pregnant women in the hardware store. So 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 contrasting them with the text, and have achieved the feat that while listening to the songs, one does not think even once of lyric poetry with musical accompaniment. 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 well-known collaborators. This time, the music fits even better; Kaléko's texts move in it completely naturally and freely, sometimes in classic song form with verses and choruses, sometimes a line repeating itself incantatorily until everyone has pinned the sentence to their fridge "How beautiful it is to be alone"
Since September 2023, DOTA has been on tour. With them: Dota Kehr (vocals, guitar), Janis Görlich (drums), Jan Rohrbach (guitar), Jonas Hauer (keyboards), and Wencke Wollny (vocals, saxophone, clarinet) and Antonia Hausmann (trombone, vocals) from the band Karl die Große.
There will be songs from the two Kaléko albums and some pieces with original lyrics to be heard. Acoustic, concert-like, thrilling!
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
