He­len Shair-Singh

At just 36, she is the youngest & first fe­male Cap­tain of the world fa­mous BP Rene­gades. Even at her young age, she al­ready has 21 years with Rene­gades un­der her belt. Her sta­tus in the band has clear­ly been earned through com­mit­ment, de­ter­mi­na­tion & hard work.

As a child, Can­dice's grand­moth­er's home was right next to the pa­n­yard on Char­lotte Street (now an army base) and she very of­ten played there. But her re­al in­tro­duc­tion to play­ing a pan her­self came at school, Wood­brook Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary, where at age 15 she learned to play the na­tion­al an­them on a steel­pan. The ac­com­plish­ment en­cour­aged her, and that very year she of­fi­cial­ly joined Rene­gades.

In ad­di­tion to play­ing, she al­so steadi­ly worked her way up through the ranks of ad­min­is­tra­tion, first as a com­mit­tee mem­ber, then As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary, Sec­re­tary, Vice Cap­tain and then Cap­tain (now in her sec­ond term of of­fice).

De­spite com­ing from a bro­ken home (her fa­ther, a tal­ent­ed mu­sic arranger, fell vic­tim to drugs, leav­ing her moth­er to raise her & her sis­ter since she was 2). She earned her­self 5 O'lev­els and com­plet­ed a course in typ­ing to pre­pare her for the busi­ness world. How­ev­er, she says that be­ing a part of Rene­gades taught her more than any in­sti­tute of learn­ing ever did, & in­spired her to take her mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion fur­ther, at­tain­ing Grade 5 and a Mu­sic Diplo­ma from UTT. She now flu­ent­ly reads & teach­es mu­sic, and was one of the mu­sic tu­tors in­volved with the Pa­n­yard Ini­tia­tive Pro­gram in 2012 tar­get­ing youth in the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties of POS North.

She has al­so been ac­cept­ed to study for her Bach­e­lor of Arts de­gree at UTT.

She is quite an in­spi­ra­tion to her play­ers, es­pe­cial­ly the younger fe­male ones com­ing up, so I want­ed to know who in­spired the young Can­dice An­drews.

Her re­sponse sur­prised me. De­spite the sit­u­a­tion, it's her fa­ther. She sees be­yond just his down­fall to how tal­ent­ed an arranger he was for many bands lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and in­stead of dwelling on the neg­a­tive she in­stead re­solved to nev­er al­low any­thing to im­pede her in ful­fill­ing her own great­est po­ten­tial.

Her vi­sion is to see steel­pan get the re­spect & sup­port it de­serves from the coun­try of its birth. Else­where, it is val­ued and ho­n­oured with steel­band acad­e­mies, a promi­nent place in school mu­si­cal pro­grams, fi­nan­cial sup­port and na­tion­al ex­po­sure. Peo­ple come to T&T to learn from our mas­ter pan play­ers, arrangers and pan mu­sic writ­ers, and their coun­tries ben­e­fit from it. Sad­ly it is not so here, and she is keen to change that.

She has al­ready be­gun with­in her own cir­cle of in­flu­ence - her band. She be­lieves that one of the core el­e­ments in the process is chang­ing how 'pan' is per­ceived here. Steel­band's his­to­ry is as a 'Car­ni­val thing', deeply root­ed in the 'poor low­er class­es', and vi­o­lent con­fronta­tions were the norm, and that im­age per­sists. There­fore she in­sists on a 'Code of Con­duct' for her play­ers. It is drilled in­to every one (they are giv­en print­ed in­struc­tions!) that they are am­bas­sadors, and must AL­WAYS car­ry them­selves in a man­ner be­fit­ting such. She says many of their in­ter­na­tion­al tours are a re­sult of some­one be­ing im­pressed not just with their phe­nom­e­nal mu­si­cal per­for­mances but by the ex­treme­ly high stan­dard of class and pro­fes­sion­al­ism they dis­play.

She gra­cious­ly al­lowed me to share their cre­do, penned by own hand:

'Rene­gades Val­ues -

What We Be­lieve & How We Live'

�2 We must al­ways do the right thing, moral­ly, legal­ly, eth­i­cal­ly and mu­si­cal­ly

�2 We are ac­count­able for our ac­tions

�2 We open­ly share ideas, even when we dis­agree

�2 We rec­og­nize each oth­er for a job well done

�2 We must keep learn­ing and grow­ing

and, last but not def­i­nite­ly not least:

�2 We must have fun do­ing what we do.

As I said... a re­mark­able young la­dy.