A music artiste is fundamentally a musician. An artistically evolved musician in fact. However, a musician is not necessarily an artiste.
A robot can be a musician, and play with all of the complete lack of emotional depth and feeling that an artiste has carefully cultivated and curated to create an entire artistic aesthetic, which is ultimately a total lifestyle to a true artiste at heart. More importantly, artistes have the ability to translate and communicate their entire aesthetic through musical language and physical presence if they are mindful of their overall presentation, music aside.
Artistes do not tend to overlook their physical appearance as it relates to posture, garments which accurately personify their aesthetic, and the way they physically move through space. Graceful motions through space are fundamental to art in general. Warped perceptions of time are also crucial to the musical artiste. A true artiste understands that time is an illusion, and thus is capable of manifesting their art outside of time.
This allusion to the perception of time is literal and figurative. For example, a jazz artiste solos outside of the time and plays with time according to his own whim. Away from the music this same artiste is likely to “march to the beat of his own drum” doing everything to a musical beat, especially if that beat is his own. That beat creates a vibration which defines an artiste as the artiste conveys his own vibration honestly, earnestly and accurately with conviction through music.
A musician on the other hand, is therefore one who can play music albeit without the artistic sensibilities of an artiste. Due to lack of artistic depth a musician cannot convey nearly the same amount of emotion as an artiste can through music, this making the musician incapable of making music that will resonate with audiences on a deep level which makes them feel something.
Can You Make Your Instrument Cry?
Louis Armstrong could do it with his trumpet and his voice.
Billie Holliday had the cry as well in her voice.
Lester Young cried with his sax. 
As far as the steel pan instrument or any instrument is concerned, the number of musicians greatly outnumbers the number artistes. Typically a true musical artiste playing any instrument will typically be a virtuoso. Although a typical classical orchestra or working jazz quartet will be stacked with virtuoso music artistes, these people represent the elite top 1% in their respective fields as far as musical chops are concerned.
Even if we want to include rock music into the equation, the top tier bands which sell out arenas all over the world and have catalogues which emotionally resonate with millions of people, have bands stacked with top tier musicians in the top 1% of their respective instruments in their genre. All of these bands have multiple virtuosos in them, even though rock music is obviously a different beast than jazz and classical music for reasons I won’t get into now.
But for anyone who knows anything about rock music, Slash from Guns ‘N Roses makes his guitar cry,
as does John Frusciante from Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Mike McCready from Pearl Jam is another virtuoso lead guitarist who makes his guitar wail.
It’s precisely that wail, or that cry that an artiste creates with his instrument that distinguishes him head and shoulders above the mere musician. And mind you, there are plenty of virtuoso artistes out there who you won’t see on a grand stage, but rather in a small venue or even on the streets or in the public spaces around the world. Some artistes choose to keep their talents hidden.
Joe Higgs, a founding member of The Wailing Wailers which later became The Wailers, before ultimately becoming Bob Marley and The Wailers years later, said in an interview in an old Bob Marley Documentary that “To be a Wailer you have to cry.” Joe Higgs taught Bob Marley how to sing. From the following clip with Joe Higgs, you can see the type of cry and wailing quality which he speaks of come out in his performance.
If you are familiar with the Wailers early catalog, songs like “Put It On”, “Duppy Conqueror” and the like are evidence of this cry as it relates to vocals and vocal harmonies.
Instrumentalists on the other hand have to employ different techniques to convey emotion and regardless of what instrument you play, the techniques for conveying emotion on any instrument remain the same.
Which Musical Techniques Infuse Emotion Into The Music?
To keep it simple, bends, vibrato, dynamic range, temperament and playing in a composed and controlled manner will inject all sorts of emotions into your music when these techniques are employed properly and with taste.
As these techniques relate to the steel pan instrument, they are very rarely employed, which is precisely the reason why actual steel pan artistes are a rare breed, as with a true artiste playing any instrument. To employ these techniques in your playing to the point that you are capable of making your instrument cry and wail takes years and years of concentrated practice. Until one reaches this point, one will always be just a musician as the point of music is to communicate vibrations through music to people while saying something meaningful that will resonate with the audience.
A musician is like a person who can talk, but just sounds boring and has nothing interesting to say that anyone will actually listen to or that has any value to the listeners.