Erfan Toussi, 24, started selling handpans after moving to Dubai two years ago and is now one of the few players of the instrument in the city.
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Release date: Tuesday, April 2, 2024 at 8:26 pm
In the world of music, the handpan is a newcomer. The instrument first caught people’s attention when Swiss artists Felix Rohner and Sabina Scherer created the hang. The hang is an instrument similar to the African steelpan that became popular in the 2000s, with demand outstripping supply. The handpan is a modern variation, made of a metal shell with several indentations that determine the sound. Some people use it as a percussion instrument, but its widespread appeal lies in its surprisingly soothing and meditative sound.
For these reasons, it seems unlikely that a 24-year-old would slowly and steadily establish himself in the UAE’s music scene as a handpan player. Yet that’s exactly what Iranian-born Erfan Toushi is trying to do.
The handpan symbolizes everything in Erfan’s real life: calm. And, in some ways, it’s a manifestation of the thing he loves most: nature. “As far back as I can remember, some of my happiest childhood memories are picnics in the park. Whenever I felt like playing alone, I would reach for my Lego. I would finish my Lego build in just a little over two hours,” says Erfan, a native of Tehran. “But my love of music didn’t start with the handpan. I went to classes for six months to learn to play the guitar.”
Like many boys his age, Erfan was fascinated by nature and would often go camping with his friends. During a trip to Hormuz Island, the then 20-year-old Erfan first spotted a man playing a handpan. It was a magical experience. It may have been love at first sight, but Erfan still wasn’t convinced to buy the instrument.
A friend did so, and that’s when Erfan decided to take the plunge. It wasn’t until he bought a handpan that he realised how naturally connected he was to the instrument. For three months in Tehran, Erfan was trained on how to use the handpan. After that, he was solely focused on finding his own music. “It’s such a new instrument that you can’t learn from someone else. They can teach you the basics, but you have to learn it yourself.”
Photo credit: Erfan Toushi (Instagram: @handpan.dxb)
Back home, Erfan plays his handpan amid the lush mountains, sitting there with the breeze blowing by to perfect the sound. 432 Hz is said to be the vibrational frequency of nature, which is why listening to music tuned to this frequency is often calming. “The handpan’s frequency is usually 432 Hz, so it touches your soul,” says Erfan, who dropped out of college to pursue his dreams.
Erfan moved to Dubai two years ago, when he must have been 22 years old. The main reason for the move was to experience life in a foreign country. As we talk, he says that he is the type of person who quickly gets bored with the same experiences. He is afraid of the monotony and silence of life. That’s when his long-time friends come to his rescue. It was these friends and the handpan that accompanied him when he first moved to Dubai.
He poured his time, energy and emotion into the handpan and began selling his creations to local music lovers. He got his pieces made by a supplier and sold them for 1,500 dirhams, while the European version can go up to 2,000 dirhams. “Actually, on my Instagram page (handpan.dxb), I talked about different handpans. But then my friends started encouraging me to play the handpan myself. They told me I was good at it. The more time I spent on the handpan, the more I played it and saw how each sound reflected the emotion I was feeling at the time,” Erfan said, adding that his early handpans only had eight notes, but his more recent ones have 21 notes.
Emotion is key here, because Elfan says the songs he usually plays at concerts and other performances are the story of his life. And that story, he says, is rooted in sadness. There’s nothing about the 24-year-old’s personality that tells us why he should be sad, but Elfan insists that this emotion influences his music.
Probing further, he’s not afraid to show vulnerability: “This is the first time I’ve lived alone, which is great but sometimes it can be hard to manage life. My emotions come out in my handpan.”
As someone whose music was born out of grief, it’s interesting that Erfan’s music is also calming, hopeful and meditative (he says he sometimes uses the handpan for sound healing sessions as well). But no matter how engaging it may be, the performer in him is quick to discern who in the audience is truly engaged with his music and who isn’t. “I remember when I performed at the Theatre of Digital Arts, the audience just stared at me for the whole 20 minutes, and I knew they were moved. But sure enough, sometimes people take out their phones and start scrolling or looking elsewhere,” says Erfan, who performed his first public performance with the handpan in Dubai in 2022.
Now Erfan finds peace in the tranquil desert of the UAE, where he can be seen playing the handpan in many of his Instagram videos. He works a day job in finance and teaches 10 aspiring handpan players, but he says the days are too long for him to take on “four or five more jobs.” They’re all attempts to help him find his place in the world, but with the handpan, he’s already found his calling. Does his family back in Iran approve? Erfan says his parents and 14-year-old sister have never seen him play live, but they approve greatly. To them, it’s not just music, it’s seeing one of their peers achieve greatness.