Since the mid-19th century, innovations within Cuban music have been attributed to the Afro-Cuban community. Genres such as son, conga, mambo, and chachachá combined European influences from Cuban Spanish roots with sub-Saharan African elements. Cuban music evolved markedly away from the traditional European model towards improvisational African traditions. Afro-Cuban musicians have taken pre-existing genres such as trova, country, and rap and added their own realities of life in a socialist country and as black persons. Genres like Nueva Trova are seen as live representations of the revolution and have been affected by Afro-Cuban musicians like Pablo Milanes who included African spirituals in his early repertory. Music in Cuba is encouraged both as a scholarly exercise and a popular enjoyment. To Cubans, music and study of it are integral parts of the revolution. Audiences are proud of mixed ethnicity that makes up the music from the Afro-Cuban community, despite there being a boundary of distrust and uncertainty between Cubans and Afro-Cuban culture.