The folk ethnographic group "Zabava" was founded in 1987 at Saratov Regional House of Culture and Science. Since1989 the group has been making part of Russian Folk League."Zabava" does a complex study and keeps the traditions of Russian musical culture, propagandizes it, singing authentic examples of folk songs on the stage. Leaders of group - Anjelika Glumova, Vadim Kovalsky, Anastasiya Borovskaya.

The creative luggage of the group has about 400 old Russian peasant and Cossack songs (dancing, drawling, historical, ritual, wedding), dances, quadrilles, sung couplets, games, dances in a ring. The repertoire of the group includes folk dramas, summer and winter street performances (mummer people, Petrushka's theatre, den).

The members of the group collect folk material in ethnographic expeditions, and then the material is studied (with the help of audio- and video records). The characteristic features of the group are its careful treatment to every folk material, its orientation to the grown-up rural people).

Depending on the content of the program the group performs either in real peasant costumes of the end of the XIX-XX centuries, brought from the expeditions in South regions of Russia (homespun skirts, shirts with hand-made fancy work, old female breast decorations: collar and gaitan, or in Saratov costumes made by the members of the group to a strict order to the museum samples.

Zabava" studies the material in complex that's why the members of the group do the decorative-applied activity: glass beads plaiting, weaving, and making traditional toys (twist dolls, straw dolls, earthenware whistles and etc.). There is a museum of traditional cultural at the group.

The male part of the group can play old musical instruments: accordion, Russian accordion, balalaika, tambourine, violin (Cossack and South-Russian tradition), zhaleyka, horns, reeds and wheel lyre. There is a Children Study in the group. Children acquaint themselves with old games, quadrilles, dances in a ring, decorative-applied creative works. Directors pay special attention to the method work - they publish educational audio-, videocassettes to the work with children and teenagers; publish booklets to the conducting of ritual holidays.

All these are checked and confirmed by our experience: "Zabava" prepares, studies and then celebrates calendar holidays: Christmas, Pancake Week, Trinity, Kupala. Five years running "Zabava" is the only organizer of the City Ritual Holiday "Good bye, Shrovetide!" in Saratov which gathers hundreds of citizens. Saratov TV made 12 films with the group, four of which are devoted to Russian holidays.

Zabava" leads a big concert activity, often goes to All-Russian and international festivals. Directors of the group carry out master-classes and creative seminars, take part in conferences. "Zabava" has an immense supply of old games and dances. The group shows all these things at different festivals.