DOTA

DOTA, the Berlin band around the “hardest touring woman in German showbusiness” aka. Dota Kehr, goes on tour in 2023 with their new album »In der fernsten der Fernen«. It is the second album which sets texts by the German-Jewish writer Mascha Kaléko from the 1920s and 30s to music – so skillfully that no one thinks of poetry with musical accompaniment. With Dota, the Kaléko texts sound as if they were written today. No wonder, her circle of fans is growing constantly, so that the concert at Kampnagel in October was sold out in a few weeks and we have put on a second show in November.

PR TEXT OF DOTA'S AGENCY:

»After the great success of the first album, the band DOTA once again dedicates itself musically to the texts of the poet Mascha Kaléko. Their second Kaléko album is entitled »In der fernsten der Fernen« and will be released on September 8th, 2023.

DOTA hits the nerve of its time and with its music hits several. The music of the Berlin band jumps and dances, it stops, jumps off the quarry pier, swims and dives. It mixes folk and indietronica and lets its love of Brazilian music flash here and there. Her lyrics are touching through immediacy, Dota Kehr does not speak of the ivory tower, but of people here and now and their small triumphs and big abysses, their inadequacies of trying to be close and moving in society. She wins the Fred Jay Prize and the German Record Critics' Award, she writes unintentional little hymns, makes record after record, always imagining her best song in the future and earns herself the title of "hardest touring woman in German show business". At one of the concerts, a fan slips her a booklet by the author Mascha Kaléko. Dota is thrilled by the directness of the poems, the brevity of the language and makes a plan to make music out of the texts. The simple elegance and timeless radiance of her poetry fits Dota like a glove. And not only her. In keeping with the poems and their sensitive settings, Dota has brought wonderful duet partners into the studio: In addition to Alin Coen, Uta Köbernick, Felix Meyer, Max Prosa, Karl die Große and Francesco Wilking (from the Höchsten Eisenbahn), Konstantin Wecker and Hannes Wader are also part of the album.

Of course there was much more to discover in Kaléko's volumes of poetry, essays, mixed notes and diary entries. Well enough for a second record, again with well-known collaborators. On DOTA's second Kaléko album »In der fernsten der Fernen«, studio guests include Gisbert zu Knyphausen, Dirk von Lowtzow (Tocotronic), Funny van Dannen and Sarah Lesch.

Dota and her band have given the poems an additional layer, new colours – sometimes also contrasting them with the text – and have achieved the feat that, while listening to the songs, you never once think of poetry with musical accompaniment. Dota has brought Masha Kaléko's texts into our time, even more: they sound as if they were written now, in this form.

Mascha Kaléko's early poems are trenchant sketches of everyday life in Berlin slang. This sister in the spirit of a Joachim Ringelnatz or Erich Kästner created her intimate, sometimes ironic, often heart-breakingly soulful metropolitan poetry in Berlin of the 1920s and 30s, before she had to emigrate to New York as a German Jew.

From September 2023, DOTA will go on tour with her second Kaléko album »In der fernsten der Fernen«. They will be joined by duet partner Wencke Wollny aka Charlemagne, who will also contribute saxophone and bass clarinet, Janis Görlich (drums), Jan Rohrbach (guitar) and Jörg Holdinghausen (bass). Songs from the two Kaléko albums and some of the band's own pieces will be heard. Acoustic, concertante, rousing: "In der fernsten der Fernen" is a musically outstanding tribute to the wonderful work of Mascha Kaléko by one of the most interesting current German-language bands!

The band around Dota Kehr has been making music together since 2003. Under the name DOTA, the collective has been on the road since 2018 and inspires with a special mix of folk, bossa nova, indietronica and jazz.«