Familiar or exotic: visions of the singing countryside in Lithuanian folklore ensembles

ENIdeologies of virtually all folk music revival movements tend to juxtapose the culture of the "old" and "good" community - folk - with the "modern" and "bad" contemporary society. These conceptual images of the old community and the contemporary society can contain various visions and oppositions, motivated by different reasons. Therefore, many researchers of folk music revival movements review and analyse scholarly, popular and revivers' concepts of folk: it is acknowledged that these concepts are social constructs, which influence the selection of musical practices to be revived and evaluation of legitimacy of practices of revivalists themselves. Lithuanian folklore ensembles revive vanishing musical practices of the countryside and ground their activities on visions of this old countryside. How are the old folk remembered in these visions? Using data from observation of performances, interviews and from other sources (gathered in 2008-2013), Lithuanian folklore ensembles' visions of folk and their changes are discussed: chronological limits of the past, sources used for construction of these visions, and the relationship of folk with revivers are analysed in the paper. Folk usually are imagined as a peasant community of the 19th-the mid-2011' century in the movement of folklore ensembles. In the hierarchy of value of sources used for construction of images of folk the direct personal experience clearly stands out among other available sources and the movement appears as based on the culture of direct personal experience. The attitude that members of folklore ensembles are closely related to the folk is dominating in the movement. The aspects analysed in the paper show that this movement is dynamic, sometimes full of contradictions, sometimes actively interacting with other forms of folk music revival and cultural trends, and reflecting public sentiments.