We’re floating gently into spring on the resonant steel percussion tones of the “Hang.”
It’s an instrument with a story that goes back to the beginning of the 21st century, when Swiss instrument makers SABINA SCHäRER and FELIX ROHNER of PANArt Manufacturing were restless. They’d been making steel drums—the popular steel band instruments of the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago. They wanted to go in a new direction, and in a burst of technical and artistic creativity, they invented the Hang.
The story of the Hang is part of a longer, older story of the evolution of tuned percussion. It begins in the 18th century with the African “talking drum.” By mid-20th century it leads to the “steel drum” or “steel pan” — made from 55 gallon industrial oil drums, played with rubber tipped mallets on a concave surface, and tuned to a conventional 12-note chromatic scale.
The Hang was released in 2000 to worldwide acclaim. Demand soon overwhelmed the artisanal production methods of PANArt Manufacturing, which led to similar instruments being offered by other makers. The copyright of the brand name “Hang” was successfully established by PANArt, so other makers switched to the more accurate generic term “handpan” to describe the new instruments. There are now hundreds of makers and thousands of players in the worldwide handpan community, and PANArt has filed a lawsuit to establish its patent on the design of the Hang, as well as the name.
On this transmission of Hearts of Space, a tuned percussion journey for resonant steel, on a program called “HANDPAN EVOLUTION.”