News — Author: Rudy Kendall

Happy New Year to all the readers of the KaribPAN blog! A much needed hiatus was taken from the online steelpan blogosphere as family, travel, and international movements took precedence for the better part of 2018. And what an absolutely fabulous year 2018 was in terms of getting boots on the ground in numerous Caribbean territories on the lookout for fertile steelpan soil.  Needless to say, as progress has essentially been stifled in the motherland of steelpan, until Trinidad gets her house in order it is apparent that fresh and new opportunities for growth are to be had elsewhere, especially...

   KaribPAN is happy to introduce our first public offering of our nine note handpan which is constructed on a new batch of shells we are currently experimenting with. Without going into too much detail about our shells and their specifications, all of our previous handpans that we offered for sale were sculpted from shells that were originally 1.2 mm thick before we thinned them out with sand paper in order to get better resonance and tonal quality from them. As such, it was quite difficult getting the fifths tuned into all of the notes on our previous intruments. However,...

Brand new, finely tuned KaribPAN handpan in D Minor. This instrument is the third and final sound sculpture installation of our Celtic Minor Series. Free FedEX International Economy Shipping and 1 FREE TUNING in included with this offer. Notes: D, E, F G, A, Bb, C, D   View More Details In Our Online Store!

Out of the tens of thousands of active pannists around the world, only a tiny percentage of such pannists are able to earn a living strictly from steelpan performances alone. In fact, regardless of the instrument involved, most musicians find it extremely challenging to line up sufficient gigs to make a living. Hence the reason why many musicians have day jobs and do not bother with making the difficult but necessary sacrifices needed in order to make a career out of musical performances whether on the paid stage or on the stages of the public spaces of the world.  The...

The fiasco currently surrounding PanTrinbago and the National Carnival Commission (NCC) has unquestionably served to negatively impact the global perception of the state of steelpan affairs in the Mecca. The sobering news of Trinidad & Tobago Panorama 2016 pannists going unpaid until this very day, coupled with the recent media storm which has steadily been brewing around Keith Diaz (President of PanTrinbago) for the past couple of months presents some interesting questions. One interesting question which is a nice segue into the heart of this article is; ''Is it likely that Caribbean carnivals (especially T&T carnival) are more of a...