SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­l­sand­ty@gmail.com

Al­low the spir­it of God to lead you, and live in love,” are two of the many pro­found mes­sages Laven­tille res­i­dent Genelle Bharat ad­vo­cates.

Known as very am­bi­tious, hard­work­ing, and mul­ti-tal­ent­ed, she’s a fire­fight­er, Miss Car­ifes­ta 2006, pan­nist, singer-song­writer-per­former, African drum­mer, con­tent cre­ator and per­cus­sion­ist.

“I proud­ly hail from the vi­brant com­mu­ni­ty of Old St Joseph Road (cur­rent­ly Bertie Mar­shall Boule­vard), Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille, and de­spite the myr­i­ad of un­pleas­ant news re­port­ed on the com­mu­ni­ty, that does not large­ly rep­re­sent it. My child­hood was gold­en, care­free and filled with joy. My par­ents al­ways en­sured that we lacked noth­ing.”

A rel­a­tive of the late ac­claimed ca­lyp­son­ian, San­dra “Singing San­dra” Des Vi­gnes, Bharat said her moth­er’s fam­i­ly on her grand­moth­er’s side was Bap­tist, and they grew up with­in the faith.

She re­calls hav­ing a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion from very young.

“Every­one wor­shipped in my fam­i­ly’s Bap­tist church on a Sun­day, which was run by my de­ceased aunt Shirley Des Vi­gnes. She taught every­one about the bible. I got bap­tised at the age of 13 be­cause I had a burn­ing de­sire to. I al­ways felt some sort of spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion, but I nev­er un­der­stood any­thing about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty at that time,” re­vealed Bharat.

Bharat not­ed “pow­er­ful” time of the year where four re­li­gious ob­ser­vances—Eid, Lent, Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Day and East­er—trail be­hind each oth­er in T&T, and re­flect­ed on how she ex­pe­ri­enced and over­came some deep dis­com­forts, by hav­ing faith.

She dis­closed, “One of my biggest dis­com­forts was hav­ing to sep­a­rate my­self from the peo­ple that I thought con­sid­ered me the way that I con­sid­ered them. Some of these peo­ple pre­tend­ed to like me but se­cret­ly hat­ed me. I re­alised very late that they were drain­ing me men­tal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly and on­ly hung around for their self­ish gain. I over­came this dis­com­fort with vi­sions and spir­i­tu­al guid­ance. I al­lowed true love of self—my in­ner God and God­dess—to lead me, and every­thing fell in­to place for sep­a­ra­tion to take ef­fect nat­u­ral­ly. To­day, I have ab­solute­ly no re­grets about the harsh de­ci­sion that was nec­es­sary.”

Bharat, who is a wife, as well as moth­er to an “amaz­ing” daugh­ter and son, re­called an­oth­er God-di­rect­ed mo­ment.

“I be­gan play­ing the steel­pan at eight years old. That’s when I knew I want­ed to be­come a mu­si­cian. At the age of 17, I at­tend­ed a steel­pan fes­ti­val com­pe­ti­tion called Pan Down Mem­o­ry Lane. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice Steel Or­ches­tra (FS­SO) par­tic­i­pat­ed, and af­ter ob­serv­ing their per­for­mance, I said to my­self, ‘I wish I could be part of that band’. The uni­verse heard my con­ver­sa­tion and I was af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play with the FS­SO as a civil­ian mem­ber in 2010. I be­came an aux­il­iary fire­fight­er at the age of 19, and be­cause of my ex­cel­lent mu­si­cal skills fol­low­ing my six-month train­ing, mem­bers of the steel or­ches­tra rec­om­mend­ed me to be part of the pan side. I was an aux­il­iary mem­ber for eight years and a per­ma­nent fire­fight­er for sev­en. This year is 15 years that I’ve been in the ser­vice.”

Bharat still feels proud of her pass­ing out cer­e­mo­ny at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, decked in her lily-white dou­ble-breast­ed tu­nic with red ac­cents and sil­ver but­tons, blue skirt, stock­ings and spot­less­ly clean black shoes. She high­ly re­gards her pro­fes­sion, pri­ori­tis­es it over every­thing she does, and refers to it as “the hottest ser­vice”.

Of work com­mit­ment she said, “While lik­ing/lov­ing and en­joy­ing your job, get­ting up and go­ing to work is not about con­stant en­joy­ment, it’s about pride, pur­pose and un­der­stand­ing the true mean­ing of why I am there. My pur­pose is big­ger than the job en­tails. My au­ra and my pres­ence with­in my work­space are deeply felt by my work peers. They ra­di­ate a sense of peace if one is an­gry, pos­i­tive vi­bra­tions if one feels neg­a­tive and hap­pi­ness if one is sad. My spir­it helps oth­ers to be­come mo­ti­vat­ed and up­lift­ed.”

“I’m cov­ered by grace, guid­ed by pur­pose, and go­ing through my jour­ney with un­der­stand­ing. No man could ever stop what the uni­verse has in store for me.”

Bharat’s al­so a ca­lyp­so, so­ca, reg­gae-dance­hall writer/per­former. She said when she hits any stage, she leaves every­thing there—pas­sion, pow­er, pur­pose.

She’s al­so more than a pan­nist. Bharat’s tunes, Chords, Pan Jumbie and First Place, self-writ­ten/pro­duced for steel bands to per­form at Na­tion­al Panora­ma, took Laven­tille Ser­e­naders to win­ners’ row (2015-2017). Then, too, she sang at Kaiso House and col­lab­o­rat­ed with Aaron “Voice” St Louis with Vote Of Thanks. Among her oth­er works are We Are Bless (2020) and this year’s Wake Up, which she wrote and per­formed at Queen’s Hall. She al­so graced the Eye Slam Con­cert se­ries, Slam 100.5FM stu­dio and Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter and Tem­per­a­ture the Band band rooms.

Bharat was al­so a 2018 Young Queen fi­nal­ist.

Her so­ca cat­a­logue in­cludes Feel It, In­tox­i­cat­ed, and Bad Mind Meh.

“I was able to achieve more than one goal this year, and it def­i­nite­ly showed me that noth­ing pro­duc­tive is im­pos­si­ble as long as you’re will­ing to put in the work.”

Bharat added that she’s humbly count­ing her bless­ings be­cause she’s fo­cused on growth, goals and be­ing ground­ed.