Cupolas are not steelpans
Instruments with structural similarities can be totally different instruments, because they connect with different culture.
For a moment, let’s imagine that we are in China, 500 BCE. We see a guy taking a block of wood and carve it hollow. Then he closes the box with a wooden lid, adds seven strings on top of it and there we have it, guqin, the world’s oldest known zither.
During the next 2500 years the instrument is reinvented across different countries and during its travel it evolves into new instruments, some of which hardly reminds us of the original. The main principle is always the same: strings are stretched across a hollow box, which works as a resonator making the sound stronger. The strings are sometimes plucked with fingers, sometimes hit with a hammer, sometimes bowed.
Even though the principle is the same, there’s no point in arguing that the Chinese guqin and the Finnish kantele would be the same instrument, even though the basic construction is practially identical. So, what’s the difference, then? The culture that it connects with.
I have often been asked if the instrument I play is a steelpan. I always tell its roots are in Caribbean steelpans, as well as some Indian and Asian concepts (mainly the ghatam and the various gamelan instruments).
After my first blog post a someone wrote critically about the various names people have given to the instrument commonly known as the handpan (or as I prefer to call it, the cupola). The writer’s view was that a pan is always a pan, no matter what you call it. In a way, he has a point. Just like the zithers are always just boxes with strings, round sheet metal instruments with tuned tone fields are from a certain point of view always ”pans”.
The problem, however, with this kind of labeling is in the denial of the natural branching of all arts and cultures. For example I find ”handpan” a somewhat problematic name for my instrument, because I have no real connection with the steelpan culture. I love the steelpan culture, but my personal experience with it is very limited. I don’t play a hand played pan.
Of course, there are big structural differences between the steelpan and the cupola, as well. Like zithers, and unlike steelpans, cupolas have a resonating air chamber. Cupolas have also dimples in the tonefields, which are not a typical or traditional steelpan form.
Whatever the outer differences are, the biggest difference is in the culture the instrument is tied with. Steelpans are naturally tied closely with the steelpan tradition, but cupola players hardly ever have any contact with the steelpan tradition. And this is what makes the cupola a truly novel instrument.
Sometimes people who know their steelpan history kindly remind us that the Hang is not an original invention. In the early stages the steelpan makers experimented with the convex shape, which already comes close to the modern cupola. It is an interesting thought, how the history of the steelpans might have been different if the prototyped hand played convex steelpan had become more popular back then. Who knows, perhaps somewhere in some parallel universe this happened…
However, in the universe we live in, the cupola, as we know it, emerged in Switzerland sometime around 2001. The culture around the instrument is around 15 years young, only waiting for its first true masterpieces to be written.
Would you like to read more of my thoughts about the instrument or the culture around it? Leave a comment here or on my Facebook page! Also, feel free to share the article on your own social media accounts. :)
