Beatroots Bateria is Reading’s community Samba drumming group. Beatroots plays energetic carnival style samba music mixing African, Asian and Latin-American rhythms and is one of the UK’s longest established community samba groups. The group was started in Reading in 1996 by Readipop founder, Gavin Lombos and is influenced by the Bahian rhythms of Salvador, Brazil. The band has gone on to perform at many major events and festivals including Entertaining the olympic crowds at Eton Dorney during London 2012, London’s millennium celebrations, WOMAD, The Thames Festival and Live Earth at Wembley. Members of the group drummed in the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony.