Hang

The steelpan, born in Trinidad's oil drum yards, had evolved for decades within Caribbean musical traditions. But its potential for transformation remained unexplored until Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer, Swiss steelpan builders at PANArt, began experimenting with new forms in the late 1990s. Their question was deceptively simple: what if you built a steelpan that didn't need sticks?

The Hang (Bernese German for 'hand') emerged in 2000 as something entirely new: two steel hemispheres joined at the rim, creating a lens-shaped instrument played with the hands. The top surface featured a central note (the 'ding') surrounded by a circle of tone fields, while the bottom had a resonating aperture. When struck with fingers, palms, or the base of the hand, the Hang produced ethereal, bell-like tones that blended the steelpan's Caribbean warmth with something resembling a singing bowl.

The adjacent possible required decades of PANArt's steelpan expertise—understanding how to shape steel into acoustic resonators, how nitriding treatment affected tone quality, how different hammering patterns created different pitches. The company had built conventional steelpans since 1993, accumulating metallurgical and acoustic knowledge that made the Hang's novel geometry feasible. But it also required stepping outside the steelpan tradition entirely, reimagining what a steel percussion instrument could be.

Geographic factors mattered in unexpected ways. Switzerland had no steelpan tradition—Rohner and Schärer came to the instrument as outsiders, which freed them to experiment beyond Caribbean conventions. Bern's craft tradition supported precision metalwork. And Switzerland's cultural openness meant the Hang could be positioned not as ethnic music but as a new instrument for meditation, new age music, and experimental composition.

PANArt produced the Hang entirely by hand, limited to about 120 per month. They refused to patent the design, believing the knowledge should remain craft tradition. But this created artificial scarcity that drove prices from initial hundreds of euros to thousands on secondary markets. Imitations proliferated—handpans, tongue drums, similar concepts—but PANArt maintained that the Hang was sui generis, refusing to call it a 'handpan' and eventually discontinuing production in 2013.

The instrument found unlikely fame through street musicians and YouTube videos. Its distinctive sound became synonymous with 'world music' soundtracks and meditation apps. The scarcity drove demand higher, creating a collectors' market. Meanwhile, companies like Pantheon Steel, HALO, and numerous Asian manufacturers created their own handpan variants, democratizing access to the sound if not the original instrument.

By 2025, the Hang had spawned an entire category of instruments and a global community of builders and players. The original PANArt instruments commanded five-figure prices. What began as two Swiss craftspeople's experiment with steel had created a new branch of the percussion family tree—a genuinely new instrument in an era when most 'new' instruments were electronic.