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Morning Open Thread Saturday April 5, theme: Music on the Handpan instrument [1]
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Date: 2025-04-05
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>>>This diary is about music performed on an instrument called the handpan.
Note: the term ‘steelpan’, as used below, refers to the standard ‘steel drum’, played with small mallets, as seen in Caribbean music, a link to that is listed below.
There is some controversy about that terminology ‘handpan’ because the instrument is quite similar to an earlier instrument called the ‘hang’. The controversy is too detailed for a short diary, instead here are links:
Handpan Hang steelpan
>>>Snippets from the handpan link:
Handpan is a term for a group of musical instruments that are classified as a subset of the steelpan. Several handpan makers and brands have emerged in recent years, resulting from a growing worldwide interest in the Hang, which is an instrument based on the physical properties of the Trinidadian steelpan, Indian ghatam, Thai gong, and Indonesian Gamelan.
The basic form of a handpan consists of two metal half-shells glued together, a center tone field (named Ding) surrounded by a circle of at least seven tone fields on the upper side and an opening in the bottom side (named Gu). Differences between manufacturers include the materials used, the manufacturing processes of the raw forms, the shaping of the tone fields, and the tuning methods.
The term handpan has been discussed with much controversy over the instrument's relatively short life. Critics pointed out that the Hang, which most makers of the handpan use as a standard model, is essentially based on the same physical principles.
Furthermore, the term pan is used for the national culture of the steel bands in Trinidad and Tobago. Supporters stressed the necessity of a generic term. They advocated that handpan is a suitable and well-understood new term for the abbreviation of a steelpan played by hand. It has become a conventional expression among those who are interested in these kinds of instruments, and in popular culture.
====== Aside:
why ‘Latin America’? Short answer: people there speak Romance (aka Latin) languages. (Spanish, Portuguese, others).
Wiki: Romance languages
Longer, confusing (to me) answer Wiki: Latin America
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Here’s a few tunes:
Urban by Kate Stone
Singing Wok by Kate Stone
Handpan Duo by Kate Stone and Rafael Sotomayor
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