Somewhere in a house in Portland, a melody is drifting through the rooms, and someone who knows the repertoire stops to listen. "But I don't recognize this raga," Shantala says, "I have to take a closer look." That small moment of puzzlement is the hinge of a two-and-a-half-minute video posted by Shantala Music on October 15, 2026, titled "Raga Stevekauns (A World Premiere)!" Nothing about the clip is polished. There is a dog in the room who appears to approve, a question asked mid-phrase, and a name chosen almost on the spot. Yet it captures one of the oldest and most intimate acts in Hindustani music: a musician hears something that does not yet have a name, and decides to give it one.
The sequence is simple. Steve is playing at home. Shantala listens, admits she does not recognize the raga, and asks him directly whether he has a name for it. His answer, as the transcript records it, places the new music in relation to three existing ragas: "Chandra kauns, Mal kauns, and Jog." He describes a movement between them, Jog kauns and Non kauns, "dancing between those three," and says he is getting "something that um seems new and wonderful." Shantala answers with the decision that gives the clip its title: "for the moment I'll call it Steve kauns."
From there the conversation turns practical. Shantala proposes premiering the raga the next day in Portland, and then turns to the family dog, Tosha, asking whether she likes it too. The video's own description says Tosha "gave it five stars." It is the lightest possible tone, and it does not hide the seriousness underneath. A raga is being presented to the world, even if the world, at that point, was one household.
A raga is best understood not as a tune you can write down and hand to someone, but as a melodic framework: a set of notes arranged with particular movements, emphases, and moods that a performer learns to inhabit and develop. Two players can use the same raga and sound nothing alike, because the framework leaves room for the musician's own shaping of phrases. That is why the question "what is this?" carries weight in this tradition. Identifying a raga means recognizing the grammar a player is working within, and when a player says the music is not yet recognized, they are saying the grammar has shifted or grown.
Naming, then, is not a marketing exercise. It is a way of acknowledging that something has come into being that deserves a handle, so that other musicians can find it, learn it, and argue about it. The clip shows this in miniature. Shantala does not rush to label what she hears; she asks for a name first, and the answer she receives is built from names that already exist. The new thing is defined by its relationships to the old.
The phrase "dancing between those three" is the most musically revealing line in the clip. In Hindustani practice, closely related ragas often share a set of notes but differ in which notes are emphasized, how phrases begin and resolve, and where a performance tends to dwell. A new raga that moves among several of them is not a copy of any one; it is a new center of gravity inside a family. The three names Steve offers, Chandra kauns, Mal kauns, and Jog, are the reference points. The kauns family itself is the lineage the new music is placed inside.
This is also why the title "Stevekauns" carries a built-in hedge. The video's description calls it "a raga we're calling 'Stevekauns' (for now, at least)." That qualifier matters. A raga's name often settles only after musicians have played it many times, in different rooms, with different accompanists. Calling it provisional is an honest acknowledgment that the music is still being discovered.
"I'm getting something that um seems new and wonderful and I think for the moment I'll call it Steve kauns."
Shantala, in the Shantala Music video "Raga Stevekauns (A World Premiere)!," posted to YouTube October 15, 2026
The description frames the next step as "a rare intimate evening of acoustic Hindustani classical music" at the Nepalese Dance Mandal in SE Portland, scheduled for Thursday, October 15, at 7 PM, with tickets sold at the door. The intimacy is the point. A raga that begins at a kitchen table, or in the middle of a domestic afternoon, is best heard in a room small enough that the player's breath and touch on the instrument can still be felt. The premiere was meant to move the music from a home setting to a public one without losing that closeness.
It is worth noticing what the premiere is not. It is not presented as a finished composition with a fixed score. It is a first public hearing of an idea that the performers themselves describe as still forming. That is the honest way new ragas enter the world: someone plays them for people they trust, the reactions shape what comes next, and the name either holds or changes.
The clip is short, and much of it is conversation rather than extended playing. Still, a listener can take away a useful habit from it. When a musician says a piece sounds unfamiliar, pay attention to what they compare it to. Shantala's first instinct is to ask what it is, and Steve's answer is comparative: here are three things, and this is how the new one moves among them. Learning to hear that comparison, which note families are shared and which are being pushed in a new direction, is the first step toward hearing a raga the way its performers do.
The five-star review from Tosha is, of course, a joke. It is also a reminder that the first audience for new music is often the one that cannot put its judgment into words, and that the ears of the people closest to a player have a way of noticing when something is working.
If this clip sent you looking for the ragas it names, start with the kauns family itself: Chandra kauns, Mal kauns, and Jog are the reference points Steve and Shantala use, and comparing their characters by ear will make the phrase "dancing between those three" far more vivid. Then listen for the same process in other musicians' work. Notice how a performer who knows a raga well still chooses different phrases each time they play it. The premiere of Stevekauns, scheduled for October 15 at the Nepalese Dance Mandal, is a snapshot of a raga in its earliest public stage. The most useful thing a listener can do with a snapshot like this is to go back, listen closely, and wait to hear how the name changes.
