On December 16, 2021, Dr. Rūta Žarskienė received the Lithuanian Culture Ministry’s Prize for the Promotion and Dissemination of Traditional Culture. She is a long-time employee of the Folklore Archive Department at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore (in 2002–2017 she was the director of this department). As an ethnomusicologist she combines the creation of a state-of-the-art archive and digitization of collections with educational activities; she organizes scientific seminars on folk piety and religious traditions as well as she is one of the organizers of the annual Folklore Week. Another activity for which she is well-known to the public is leading the folklore ensemble “Dijūta,” which has prepared a number of carefully composed and well-performed concert programs. In 2011, “Dijūta” together with its leader R. Žarskienė were awarded the title of Best City Folklore Ensemble with the “Golden Bird” nomination for their active involvement in the adaptation and dissemination of authentic folklore. In 2019, the folklore ensemble celebrated its 40th anniversary.
R. Žarskienė has contributed a great deal to the digitization, research and presentation of the old Lithuanian folklore collections housed at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore. She oversaw the digitization of the Lithuanian Folk Music Phonogram Collection (included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2007), and the Lithuanian Science Society’s Collection of Folklore Manuscripts (included in the Memory of the World Register in 2013). Thanks to her correspondences, copies of Lithuanian folklore recordings have been transferred to the ILLF from foreign archives: the Eduard Wolter collection of recordings (1908–1909) from the Berlin Phonogram Archives, and the Aukusti Robert Niemi collection of recordings (1911–1912) from the Finnish Literature Society. In 2013, she initiated the transfer to Lithuania of the archives of Dr. Jonas Balys, a famous Lithuanian folklorist who had immigrated to the USA. The return of all these treasures delighted not only academic specialists but also members of the folklore movement who learned about the collections through the activities of Žarskienė’s folklore ensemble. Especially popular was “Dijūta’s” program which offered a live performance of the songs and instrumental music recorded by Eduard Wolter. Also very touching was the program “Letters from America,” which was based on Jonas Balys’s folklore recordings of Lithuanians living in the USA (in 2014 this was performed at the Folklore Day of the World Lithuanian Song Festival, and elsewhere). As an ethnomusicologist, Žarskienė is a mediator between the Lithuanian Folklore Archive and the folklore movement, and thanks to her activism and creativity, the valuable archival materials reach a wider audience. Led by Rūta Žarskienė, the ensemble “Dijūta” performed at presentations of newly published folklore books at the Vilnius Book Fair, at the annual international folklore festival “Skamba Skamba Kankliai,” and other events.
In 2017, marking the centennial of the noted Lithuanian poet Kazys Bradūnas, the folklore ensemble “Dijuta” created a special program inviting audiences to listen to literary and old folk songs that were sung in the Bradūnas family. That same year the folklore ensemble recorded and released a double album “Dai lakštava lakštuotė” [So Sang the Nightingale] (funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture), wherein both programs of the previous years were recorded. In 2018, the album was presented in a concert at the National Museum of Lithuania, and on radio and TV broadcasts. In 2019, the ensemble presented a concert in honor of its 40th anniversary titled “Širdis Lietuvio turi gana džiaugsmo” [The Heart of a Lithuanian Has Enough Joy] on the main stage of the Vilnius Teachers’ House.
The main topic of R. Žarskienė’s research is Lithuanian folk instrumental music. She is an expert on archaic traditional wind instruments – skudučiai – and consults performers, students and PhD candidates. She has also researched the distribution and repertoire of the bagpipe, and has transcribed melodies performed on this instrument from old sound recordings. Recently, she has devoted attention to the scarcely-researched tradition of brass bands and orchestras of Samogitia by gathering new materials each year and organizing independent field research expeditions. She released the CD “Traditional brass music and hymns of Žemaitija” (2013), has prepared public lectures on this topic as well as presentations at international and national conferences and published more that 20 research articles. R. Žarskienė is planning on presenting all of her most recent research in a forthcoming monograph entitled “Brass Bands in Traditional Lithuanian Culture.”
