A BAND has been shaking Oxford with its samba beats for 10 years after its founding members met while working in a pub.

Brazilian drum troupe Sol Samba, which has led the Cowley Road Carnival and played a host of city festivals, has now notched up a decade of hip shaking harmonies and toe-tapping rhythms.

Now the colourful collective, which is accompanied by dancers in feather headdresses, is gearing up for a bumper celebration tomorrow night.

Co-founder Rob Foreman, 32, started the band with Brazilian Elio Villi and two other members when they began practising rhythms on glasses and plates while working as bar staff at The Trout Pub, in Wolvercote.

Mr Foreman, a carpenter, from Wolvercote, said: “We have been successful because it’s a fun band to be in.

“Occasionally, it is too loud for some people, but on the whole people come up to us after we play and ask us about the music and say they loved it.

“We had no idea it would last 10 years when we started – it was just a big experiment. We’re incredibly proud to have lasted this long, and it’s still going from strength to strength.

“Brazilian music to me is very special. It’s hard to put your finger on why it is, but you can really become taken over by it and you just want to get involved in drumming or dancing.”

Sol Samba, who practise at St Gregory the Great School in Cricket Road, are celebrating the anniversary tomorrow with a gig at the O2 Academy.

A week later they will again lead the celebrations during this year’s scaled down Carnival in the Park event, in South Park.

Mr Foreman said: “We play carnival music and it really comes into its own in a carnival context. The Cowley Road Carnival is a big thing for us. It isn’t Rio but it’s Oxford’s carnival and we’re Oxford’s samba band.”

Dance leader Sarah Hyams, from Wolvercote, said: “The music is an infectious rhythm, it makes people dance and it makes people excited, the performances are very energetic.

“The percussion is a very powerful sound. Some people do stand and watch us but most of them do end up swaying at the very least.

“Whenever we do gigs at the Academy we have a brilliant audience and we have always gone down a bomb.”

Sol Samba’s gig at the O2 Academy, in Cowley Road, starts at 9pm.

Tickets, price £8, are available online at o2academyoxford.co.uk.

cwalker@oxfordmail.co.uk