Saucers Full Of Secrets

UFO, Flying Saucer, Cosmic Disk? You can name them just about anything and people do; Zen, Halo, Bali Steel, Bell-Art…But what are they really and where do they come from?…

“Handpan” is the generic term for the instrument born out of the need to find a universal name and to avoid issues with ‘intellectual property’.  “Pan” harking back to the instruments origin.

It is important to note that most musical instruments are not new and usually have long histories dating back centuries if not much longer. The ‘Pan’ or “Steel Pan” is an exception in that, the time and origin of this instruments creation comes from the late 1930’s and 40’s in Trinidad.

Because the Steel Pan came from such humble roots, from people being suppressed by colonial rulers I believe it is important to acknowledge that an irrepressible creative spirt was present. People, ‘human beings’ are creative by nature and given a life of slender means we will find a way to express that creative spirit.

Enter the “Hang”; In the years 2000-2001 Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer introduced to the world a new variation of the Steelpan. After many years of research and testing from their humble workshop in Bern Switzerland these creative pioneers realized in their new instrument that the inverse of the Steelpan, that is, creating an instrument that was convex instead of concave was ideal for playing with the hands instead of mallets thus the “Hang” which is the Bernese German word for ‘hand. Simple? Hardly, the Hang is a complex combination of metallurgy, scientific research and a keen understanding of the music that can be coaxed from hammered steel.