Del Arno Band is a Serbian and Yugoslav reggae band formed in Belgrade in 1986. Del Arno Band are one of the pioneers of Serbian and Yugoslav reggae scenes and are considered the longest-lasting reggae band of former Yugoslavia.
Del Arno Band performing live in 2009
The founding members of Del Arno Band, Jovan and Vladan Matić
Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay", was the first popular song to use the word reggae, effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience. While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as by American jazz and rhythm and blues, and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and rocksteady. Reggae usually relates news, social gossip, and political commentary. It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the bass and drum downbeat and the offbeat rhythm section. The immediate origins of reggae were in ska and rocksteady; from the latter, reggae took over the use of the bass as a percussion instrument.
Reggae artist Bob Marley in 1980
Jimmy Cliff
Peter Tosh with Robbie Shakespeare, 1978
Tanya Stephens in 2014 at a German Reggae festival