Dotschy Reinhardt - Portrait

Michaela Dotschy Reinhardt is a German jazz singer and author. She is a Sinti. Read here more about Dotschy Reinhardt. Dotschy Reinhardt was born on November 10, 1975 near Ravensburg, Germany. She is a member of the extensive Sinti Reinhardt clan, to which legendary French guitarist and gypsy jazz musician Django Reinhardt also belonged.

Up until the time she started school, Dotschy was raised partially in a caravan in the traditional way of the Sinti. Her parents were not musicians themselves, but a lot of music was played within the family and ever since she was a little girl, Dotschy had a strong desire to become a singer. Her uncle Bobby Falta, a jazz guitarist and one of the founding members of the famous Schnuckenack Reinhardt Quintett, had a strong influence on the musical development of the young Dotschy and was one of her role models. Among her other musical role models were singers such as Pat Morressey and Ella Fitzgerald. But singers such as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett also fascinated the young girl. Because of her talent, Dotschy started taking voice and organ lessons early on, and at the age of eleven, already made her first professional performance at one of the swing evenings led by jazz pianist Horst Jankowski that were held monthly in Stuttgart at the time. When she was 15, she appeared on the TV show “Swing & Talk” with the RIAS Tanzorchester, also led by Jankowski. She worked in a record store after school to earn money for voice and guitar lessons at the jazz and rock school in Freiburg.

Dotschy Reinhardt has been living with her husband in Berlin-Pankow since 2003. In 2006, she released her debut album “Sprinkled Eyes”. By then she had already developed her own musical style of jazz, gypsy swing and bossa which she herself calls gypsy jazz. After that came the albums “Suni” in 2008 and “Pani Sindhu” in 2012. In addition to her own interpretations of jazz and gypsy swing songs, a number of original compositions written by Dotschy Reinhardt can be found on all her albums. Besides in English, Dotschy sings many songs in Romani, the language of the Sinti.

Aside from her activities as a musician, Dotschy Reinhardt writes books in which she deals intensively with her identity as a German Sinti. Her first book was published in 2008 by Scherz Verlag. It was entitled “Gipsy. Die Geschichte einer großen Sinti Familie” and was the personal story of her family in Germany. Her second book “Everybody's Gypsy: Popkultur zwischen Ausgrenzung und Respekt” was published in 2014 by Metrolit Verlag. It deals with the romanticising of the “gypsy culture” and how the Sinti and Roma confidently assert themselves against exclusion and the appropriation of their culture.

Discography:

2006 Sprinkled Eyes
2008 Suni
2012 Pani Sindhu

Books:

2008 Gipsy. Die Geschichte einer großen Sinti Familie (Frankfurt am Main: Scherz-Verlag)
2014 Everybody's Gypsy. Popkultur zwischen Ausgrenzung und Respekt (Berlin: Metrolit Verlag)

Web:

www.facebook.com/pages/dotschy-reinhardt