DOTA sings Kaléko

DOTA dedicates its current concert program to the great Berlin poet Mascha Kaléko. Kaléko's poems tell pointedly, directly, and with fine humor about everyday life, love, friendship, loneliness, societal changes, and the small and large challenges of life.

Dota Kehr discovered Kaléko’s texts through a fan and was immediately captivated by her clear, reduced language and her immediate closeness to life. This led to the idea of setting the poems to music. The first album with Kaléko adaptations was released in 2020 and became a great success. A second followed later and opened up further facets from Kaléko’s poetry collections, essays, and notes.

Together with her band, DOTA gives the texts new musical colors. Folk, indietronica, and Brazilian influences meet diverse instrumentation and make the nearly hundred-year-old poems sound surprisingly contemporary. In addition to songs from the two Kaléko albums, some pieces with original lyrics are also on the program.

In 2026, DOTA will be back with this special program at selected concerts. On stage are Dota Kehr (vocals, guitar), Janis Görlich (drums), Jan Rohrbach (guitar), Jonas Hauer (keyboards), Wencke Wollny (saxophone), and Antonia Hausmann (trombone). An acoustic-concert evening that brings Mascha Kaléko's poetic observations into the present.