The Berlin Handpan Community has been started in 2022, when 12 handpan players from Berlin, who hardly knew each other before, met at HONA (Handpan Music Gathering Naxos) on the beautiful island of Naxos in Greece. HONA 2022 was one of the first festivals that took place after a long "covid period" without any major social and cultural activities. There was an enormous thirst to be social again, to play together, to laugh and to enjoy life together, so the idea to keep the connection and to create a monthly meeting in Berlin was in the air, was discussed and came true.
Our idea was to create a space where handpan enthusiasts from Berlin and other places in Germany and from abroad could share their music and get to know each other. A place to jam together, join with other instruments or simply sing along. Therefore the monthly handpan meetups in Berlin were born, where the community meets up regularly at the Volkspark Rehberge in summertime and at the Heilpraktikschule in Kreuzberg in wintertime (Learn more about our Monthly Handpan Meetups). The musical and educational magnets of the meetings were Nadishana and David Kuckhermann, remarkable handpan players and developers from Berlin.
Here everything revolves around the handpan - a fairly new instrument that was created in our century and is still a huge unexplored field for developing new musical vocabulary and creating music especially for this kind of instrument, which combines both melodic and percussive characteristics and is just a lot of fun to play!
In fact, we see that handpan has given birth to a new subculture, a handpan tribe with special values for this world. Handpan is becoming more and more popular among people all over the world, bringing together handpan players of all nationalities and cultures. This instrument somehow attracts people who want to create, to share their love and passion for music, to share their skills and knowledge with other members of the beautiful handpan family. We are open to all kinds of new encounters and experiences, we have a beautiful vision to create a space to meet and share our love for the handpan and to celebrate life together.
At the meetups it became clear that there is an urge to create a bigger event to bring together Berlin talents and artists, makers and handpan lovers from other parts of Germany and even Europe as well. Robert, who is the main organizer of both the monthly handpan meetups and Pangonia, couldn't let go of this idea and therefore Pangonia was created and refined in further meetings with the crew. There, our common vision was formed:
Our Vision
We are a passionate Berlin community of open-minded handpan players and makers. Open to all kinds of new encounters and experiences, we hold the beautiful vision of creating a space for meeting and exchanging our love for handpan. Our intention is to come together with open hearts and express our mindful connection to this unique metallic instrument in whatever way feels most authentic for each of us: it is about being sensitive to the sound, emotion and energy it carries. It is about being sensitive and helpful to each other, being a community. We invite anyone who has similar feelings about the handpan to come and be part of this conscious circle.
During the last year, the orga team of the Pangonia Gathering went through some transformations and became the core of the official non-profit association PANTOPIA e.V. with the idea to create a stable base for the further development of the handpan movement in Berlin.