High Profile Handpan Propagandists Who Promote and Perpetuate the PANArt Myth that the Hang is a New Instrument

Over the course of the past seven months, KaribPAN has been on the cutting edge of the totally new and innovative niche of alternative steelpan news, and a siginificant portion of our news has focused on the culture and cults surrounding the handpan instrument. In fact, we have essentially single handedly created this niche in question and subsequently, we are Pan pioneers in the sense that through our blog we have provided a truthful, reality based, alternative handpan information source.

A large portion of our pioneering handpan truth movement has been focused towards providing an accurate historical record of the history of the handpan, much of which has been obscured, veiled, and flat out misrepresented in many cases by the mainstream handpan news and information outlets. Additionally, many of the high profile handpan personalities parrot the propaganda regarding handpan history, propaganda which was originally propagated by the biggest proponent of handpan impropriety as it relates to history; PANArt.

High Profile Progandists Who Promote the PANArt Myth

1. Kelly ''Jelly Belly'' Hutchinson -

Kelly Hutchinson, as the administrator of the Handpan Instruments online discussion group displays the following standard handpan propaganda, which is passed onto and disseminated among the hundreds if not thousands of daily visitors to his group:

2. HandPans Magazine (HPM) -

We first wrote about HPM back in August of this year when we discovered them by virtue of an article they had written entitled ''Taking Back the Swastika'', and were appalled until they offered a seemingly genuine clarification in our comment section. HPM ended their article by stating, ''And if you'd like to help in the battle to reclaim the swastika, with the aid of singing-steel - you can find Sergey's CosmosphereDrums for sale at Etsy.''

In the second article where we mentioned HPM, entitled, ''Steelpan and Handpan Makers/Tuners with a Satan-Free Sound: Panstream, Dave's Island Instruments & Innersound'', we referred to them as ''our newfound friends and colleagues'' until we began directly promoting the historical handpan truth directly on their forums and quickly discovered that we were not so welcome when they threatened to ban us after we posted the following article by Dr. Anthony Achong, which stated in part that, 

''The real problem here is that aural music and its appreciation are very subjective. If one wants to say that a modified timber creates a new instrument I would argue that it merely creates a different sound. When a trumpeter places a mute at the horn end of his trumpet, does that create a new instrument or just a different sound? The same holds with the violin when, with your fingers, you pluck rather than bow the strings. Plucking is like using the hand (thumb) on the Pan, while bowing is like using the stick on the Pan. Now you can blow a conch shell as a musical instrument. But when you stand on the seashore with the conch shell to your ear, does the rustling wind and the crashing waves combine with the shell to create a new instrument? It is subjective isn’t it!'' -  Dr. Achong Comments on the Pan-Hang Argument

It became clear to us at the point where HPM threatened to ban us that they were more interested in promoting white supremacist based, mainstream handpan propaganda than the truth about the history of the handpan according to Dr. Anthony Achong.

3. Wikipedia -

Although there are instances where Wikipedia can be an accurate source of information, in many cases, such as in the case of the Hang, outright lies and propaganda are published with the intent of distorting and misrepresenting the historical record.

This is not surprising considering the fact that Michael ''Poshcow'' Paschko is listed as the source of much of the disinformation that is presented in Wikipedia concerning the Hang.

It is strange to say the least that Dr. Achong is listed as a source for the Wikipedia entries on the Hang, but absolutely no reference was made to Dr. Achong's article, ''Dr. Achong Comments on the Pan-Hang Argument''. This is in spite of the fact that the Hang Wikipedia page was last edited on September 17, 2016, which is exactly one full month after Dr. Achong published the article in question.

4. Michael ''Poshcow'' Paschko -

In a recent article we published entitled, Dear Handpan Mafia, Thank You For Making KaribPAN Public Enemy #1 and Keeping Our Name On The Tips of Your Tongues, we awarded Michael Paschko with the Official KaribPAN 2016 Troll of the Year Award after receiving firm proof that he is a relentless internet troll who has used numerous aliases in order to disseminate lies and propaganda on behalf of himself and PANArt. We recently discovered that Michael Pashcko is not even an official representative of PANArt and the fact that he intentionally misleads the public to believe otherwise as part of his overall agenda of handpan deception is quite telling. But before we get to the wholly unofficial nature of Michael Paschko and his decade-long PANArt propaganda campaign, let us first take a look at the many usernames that Michael ''Poshcow'' has used to troll on karibpan.com with the intention of regularly spamming our comment sections in order to vandalize our work and spam our site with disinformation.

''It's not known to many people today that long time ago the Vandal warriors, a Germanic tribe, once established a kingdom in North Africa as their base for raiding the Mediterranean Sea, much like the Vikings. Like the Goths and Attila's Huns, the Vandals helped bring about the Roman Empire’s decline.'' - History of the Vandals

As the Germanic Vandals of ancient times helped to bring about the decline of the Roman Empire then, so does Michael ''Poshcow'', a likely modern day descendant of the Vandals help in bringing about the decline of the Handpan Mafia's neo-colonial grip on the handpan industry through his unfettered and reckless trolling on numerous online platforms. This inexcusable trolling activity on his part irreparably damages his credibility.

As far as karibpan.com is concerned, the following aliases have been used by Michael ''Poshcow'' in his discombobulated, disorganized campaign of spreading handpan propaganda:

A. ''Crack Pipe Rudy''

B. ''Educate Rudy''

C. ''Pill Me Up Scotty''

D. Handpan Mafia Anon

E. ''iSatan''

F. ''Panmageddon''

Undoubtedly, Michael ''Poshcow'' has trolled under many more aliases than the ones listed above, and one of the reasons why we permit trolling on karibpan.com is because we are well aware that ultimately the trolls will reveal themselves for who they truly are as in the present case in question. We also caught Alessio ''No Finessio'' Massi trolling red-handed under an alias in the comment section of a recent article we published, while implementing our strategy of allowing uncensored trolling on our site. Again, this strategy is just another example of KaribPAN ''playing chess while the Handpan Mafia plays checkers'', and the benefits of our strategy are obvious as we allow the trolls to expose themselves as the trolls they are to our thousands of readers in front of their very eyes.

However, we recently stumbled upon a precious jewel of a statement which proves that Michael ''Poshcow'' is the ultimate, unofficial, PANArt number one fan (fanatic) and does not have any formal ties or relations with PANArt.

There you have it, folks. Straight from the monkey's mouth. Michael ''Poshcow'' has admitted that he is completely unofficial in every way as the Hangblog is his own ''personal documentation project''. In light of the fact that he is obviously not being paid for his volunteer ''services'' on behalf of PANArt and he was exposed as a steelpan scammer by us with the invaluable assistance of Dr. Anthony Achong, it is safe to say that Michael ''Poshcow'' has effectively wasted the past ten years of his life in his failed effort to spread steelpan lies. Interestingly enough, Michael ''Poshcow'' still quotes Dr. Achong when it suits him, while going through great lengths to avoid any personal comment or discussion about Dr. Achong's article, ''Dr. Achong Comments on the Pan-Hang Argument'', much of which was spent systematically and repeatedly rebuking Michael ''Poshcow'' for his numerous utterances of steelpan untruths.

5. Jeremy ''Germy'' Arndt -

Germy Arndt is a German descended neo-nazi who we wrote about in a recent article and exposed a subliminal Nazi swastika in his logo. Given his promotion of Nazi symbols, it is no surprise that he spends his life promoting Germanic propaganda Josef Goebbels style, while earning a profit.

While Germy Arndt rightfully mentions that the Hang has roots in Trinidad, in his schizophrenic, sociopathic Germanic delirium, he mentions in virtually the same breath that, ''In 2001, a new acoustic instrument was created in Bern, Switzerland.''
Not only does this statement directly contradict the false claims made by Wikipedia, Kelly ''Jelly Belly'' Hutchinson and HPM that the ''Hang was born in the year 2000'', but more importantly, Dr. Achong clearly shot down the widespread myth that the Hang is a ''new'' instrument when he stated,

''As I said before, there is no different or completely different principle! This rawform (nitrided steel) as all others that have been tried, aluminum, brass, stainless steel etc, is tuned in the same way as one tunes the Pans made from the traditional low-carbon steel drum rawform. They ALL operate under the same set of principles. No “new” geometry is required either. Not all metals are equally good however. The sound is NOT in the metal (a common mistake) but in the Dynamics. This common mistake of “sound in the metal” is often made by listeners who, on hearing the sounds of a properly prepared Pan, are so mystified that they attribute the beautiful tones to the metal. I have seen this mistake even among Pan Researchers. The Dynamics is the first secret I have revealed to you.''

- ''Dr. Achong Comments on the Pan-Hang Argument''

The List Goes On and We Could List Many More Offenders Until We Are Sore

Handpan.org refers to the PANArt Hang as ''the sound sculpture that inspired all handpans''. ''The Atlantic'', in their often linked, uninformed article on the handpan industry states that,

''The handpan may look like a Stone Age relic, but it was actually invented about a decade ago by Swiss artists Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer. The two were steelpan makers, and they came up with a new instrument, which they christened the “Hang” meaning “hand” in Bernese German.''

Mark Garner from Saraz Handpans prefers to refer to the propaganda of Wikipedia when offering his patrons his misleading version of handpan history:

In light of the above, it is clear that there is an agenda on the part of many individuals involved in the handpan industry to distort and misrepresent the history of the handpan. Although we could spend an entire evening listing the numerous culprits behind this handpan scam of enormous proportions, we have presented our readers with sufficient evidence to prove the point of this article. Further examples are plentiful upon careful examination of the handpan industry. 

In an industry where we have documented makers who promote everything from the Seal of Babylon, to the Mark of the Beast to subliminal KKK logos, it goes without saying that given the fact that an entire handpan industry was built and is sustained upon lies, exploitation and white supremacy are merely par for the course.