Del Arno Band celebrate forty years with a concert at the Jevremovac Botanical Garden in Belgrade on September 19 at 20:00. Tickets are around 1,050 denars.

The band formed in Belgrade in 1986, started by brothers Jovan and Vladan Matić. They are considered the first Yugoslav roots reggae band and the first reggae act from this region to perform their own songs rather than covers. That is no small distinction: in the eighties, reggae existed in Yugoslavia mostly as a borrowed sound, and Del Arno turned it into local music with local lyrics.

Since the late eighties the band has been a constant presence on the Serbian scene, and across four decades more than 150 members have passed through it. That is a figure few bands can quote, and it says Del Arno works more as a collective around the Matić brothers than as a fixed line-up.

The sound did not stay pure reggae. Over the years elements of Balkan folk music, rock and jazz have gone into it, giving it a distinctive colour different from the Jamaican original. That is also why the band survives with an audience that otherwise does not listen to reggae.

The Botanical Garden as a venue is an entirely different frame from a club. Open space, greenery and a September evening are close to an ideal setting for this genre. Tickets through tickets.rs.