What is the issue?
An attempt­ed expla­na­tion.

By Felix Rohn­er, PANArt

PANArt Hang Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ltd. is a Swiss com­pa­ny based in Bern. The com­pa­ny is engaged in the con­struc­tion of sound sculp­tures made of ​“Pang®”, a com­pos­ite mate­r­i­al devel­oped and patent­ed by PANArt. Among oth­er things, the com­pa­ny devel­oped the now world-famous Hang® sculp­ture. Felix Rohn­er, Sabi­na Schär­er, Basil Rohn­er and David Rohn­er are present­ly work­ing in the company.

Song: Thank you Trinidad

Sec­ond Swiss Steel­band Fes­ti­val 1987, Bern, Switzerland

Arrange­ment
Pat Bern­hard

Lyrics
Felix Rohn­er
Ueli Zim­mer­mann

Vocals
Felix Rohn­er
Andreas Bür­ki

We present you an insight to the devel­op­ment of our instru­ments made with Pang com­pos­ite which has an inner ener­gy high­er than steel. A challenge.

In 1976 the steel­pan arrived in Bern. In 2016 PANArt intro­duced the Hang Bal. From the ​“round the neck” steel­band via the Hang to the ​“round the shoul­der” Hang Bal Spiel.

With footage and pho­tos from PANArt’s archive, Basil Rohn­er’s video gives us an overview of 40 years of work on the ring of steel.

A Doc­u­men­tary by Thibaut Cas­tan and Véron­ice Pagnon 

© Copy­right by Thibaut Cas­tan and Véron­ice Pagnon

The Trinida­di­an peo­ple gave a gift to the world: the sweet sound of steel. Each indi­vid­ual has to find out what is meant by this gift. You have to live it, to eat it, do digest it. In 1994 the steel orches­tra Orig­i­nal Bernese Oil Com­pa­ny orga­nized the first inter­na­tion­al Pan­yard in Europe. It was an insight into the nature of this gift from Trinidad, into the nature of human beings. This is a glimpse of the clos­ing par­ty. Enjoy! 

In 1989 I made a steel­pan out of an bar­rel from 1979. This old bar­rel, aged under the Hun­gar­i­an sun, pro­duced a won­der­ful warm sound, much bet­ter than the sound from a fresh new bar­rel from the drum fac­to­ry. This was the begin­ning of a long peri­od of research that led us to the Pang® com­pos­ite, an arti­fi­cial aged metal.

If you would like to get to know the musi­cal instru­ment Gubal®, we sug­gest you read this arti­cle. Here you can find out what this instru­ment is about.