Shostakovich wrote the suite Op. 63, Native Leningrad, in 1942 as a tribute to the courage of the citizens of Leningrad. This suite was culled from the incidental music for a "concert play spectacle" titled Native Country or Motherland. It was scored for tenor and bass soloists, choir and orchestra, and was premiered on November 7, 1942, at the Dzerzhinsky Central Club.

The suite has four movements: Overture – October 1917, Song of the Victorious October (Song of the River Neva), Youth Dance (Song of the Sailors), and Song of Leningrad. The Youth Dance is the movement transcribed as Folk Dances. It first received this name when transcribed for piano by Lev Solin. The name stuck when retranscribed for military band by M. Vakhutinsky. H. Robert Reynolds rescored Vakhutinsky's transcription, making it suitable for American wind bands.

While the melodies used in Youth Dance are reminiscent of folk tunes, Shostakovich's work is original. Considering the programmatic nature of the work, it is justifiable to assume Shostakovich wished to evoke an overt Russian sentiment in the same way that Gustav Holst's First Suite in E-flat and Gordon Jacob's An Original Suite sound and feel distinctly British.