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The festivities started as a local affair set up by the West Indian immigrants of the area and has become a full-blooded Caribbean carnival, attracting millions of people from all around the world. There are scores of massive 'sound systems', many spectacular floats and steel drum bands additionally, to keep you well fed, there are hundreds of stalls lining the streets of the area selling all sorts of food and drink including Caribbean specialities. The Notting Hill Carnival has been taking place in London, on the last weekend in August, for the past thirty nine years. The arrival of Trinidadians in Great Britain, remembering their great Carnivals back home, provided the spark which ignited Notting Hill Carnival. From a small procession through the streets with just a few people in costume and carrying steel drums in the 1960s, has evolved a huge multi-cultural arts festival, attended by up to two million people. It is a great tourist attraction that brings life to London during the month of August. The five disciplines of Carnival are: Mas' from (costume, Masquerade), Steelband, Calypso (political, social and satirical commentary, set to music), Soca (the traditional music of Carnival, a fusion of Soul and Calypso) and Static Sound Systems all play their part on the two days of Carnival-on-the-Road, creating what is the climax to a month of pre-Carnival activities such as dances, sound and soca jams, costume galas, steel band competitions. In recent years the Notting Hill Carnival has grown and grown, reflecting the multicultural nature of our society, with groups participating from Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Bulgaria, Russia, Brazil and many other places as well as from all parts of the Caribbean, Africa, Central and South America and the United Kingdom. In addition to the procession of costumes, soca and steel bands, which wend their way over a route of some three miles, the area plays host to 45 licensed Static Sound Systems, each playing their own selection of soca, reggae, jazz, soul, hip-hop and funk music, house, garage. The Notting Hill Carnival is the largest arts festival in Europe and in Carnival terms is second only to Rio. It's fantastic, it's vibrant, it's full of life, it's for everyone.