Lulo Reinhardt [d]

Lulo Reinhardt, a name associated with world music, Latin Swing, a guitar virtuoso with unmistakable roots.

He was born in Koblenz on the 12.10.1961 and, like his Uncles Dawelie Reinhardt and Schnuckenack Reinhardt, comes from the famous Reinhardt family. Lulo Reinhardt was raised in the Sinti tradition where Django Reinhardt’s music played a massive part.

When he was five, Lulo was already inspired by his father Bawo Reinhardt’s record collection which included everything from Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell to the Shadows.His father was also his first guitar teacher and his mentor until his death in 2013. Lulo played for twenty years in the family band, The Mike Reinhardt Sextet, starting at twelve as a rhythm guitarist and then later as a bassist until 1993. In 1993, he founded the band I Gitanos together with his father Bawo Reinhardt and Cousin Bavo Dége. The band enjoyed success, sharing the stage with big names from the 1990s such as TOTO , Marla Glenn and Andreas Vollenweider at 'Rock against Hate' in Lengenau ( Switzerland) in 1995. The show had an audience of 60,000. Being proud of their roots, the band recorded three albums in their own language, Romnes. This is significant, because in addition to the quality of their music, the band also made Sinti and Roma culture accessible to a wider audience. The band continued until Lulo’s father’s death in 2013.

Determined to grow both musically and personally , Lulo founded his own band in 2002: With 'Lulo Reinhardt Project', he would only release his own original compositions –a band that is 99.9 % cover music free, as he likes to put it. From 2008, the Lulo Reinhardt Project was renamed the 'Lulo Reinhardt Latin Swing Project'.

In 2012, a film – NEWO ZIRO – was shot about the Reinhardt family and has since aired numerous times on Phoenix. After the success of the NEWO ZIRO project, the same team (Krieg & Nolte) shot another film, 'Desert Inspiration', in Morocco in 2015. This time they were exploring the connection between the culture of the Berber and their music in Morocco. The soundtrack by Lulo Reinhardt can also be found on his first solo album of the same title.

In 2017, he recorded a live CD with Daniel Stelter in the Stadtkirche in Darmstadt. Daniel Stelter, and the NDR Big Band, also accompanied Lulo Reinhardt on his last tour in Europe, until just before Al Jarreau died. In the same year, he recorded the album ‘Gypsy meets Classic’ with Yuliya Lonskaya, a classical guitarist from Belarus. A big dream came true in 2017. Lulo Reinhardt visited Calcutta in India, the origin of the Sinti and Roma. There he recorded –‘Gypsy Meets India’ with his friend Debhashish Bhattacharya and his longtime companion Uli Krämer. Also involved were Debhashish Bhattacharya’s brother Subhasis on Tabla and daughter Sukanya on vocals.

A Sinto and a cosmopolitan, Lulo Reinhardt continuously embraces the new and the unknown in his dreams, ideas and plans, so we can expect many exciting projects in the future.