I first saw Dennell Brewster sitting in an office preparing for a meeting with other members of the Petrotrin Hatters Steel Orchestra a few weeks ago. She was sitting alone, gathering some folders neatly on her lap when I walked in. As I cleared my throat, she looked up. She appeared tired, but in high spirits.

"We winning this year," she chuckled, as she stood to greet me, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we were meeting for the first time. "I am confident about that."

As she stood, Brewster's T-shirt settled neatly on her stomach, its size indicating that she was at least in her third trimester, if not near the end of her pregnancy.

She blushed, sidestepping questions about the due date of her pregnancy, but avowing instead that she intended to stand by her band right down to the Panorama finals.

"I cannot imagine it any other way and I believe my baby feels pretty much the same way." She rested a protective hand on her stomach and smiled. "I have not attempted to find out its sex, but I am certain of one thing — this child has music in its blood."

Brewster, 25, says she has been playing pan for the past 12 years, starting as a teenager drawn with her siblings by their love for music to the Hatters' panyard on Lady Hailes Avenue in San Fernando.

"But even before that, before we even discovered our own love for pan, it was in the family," she said, settling back into her seat as she continued to chat easily about her relationship with pan. "Our grandfathers both played with Skiffle Bunch and Hatters and my father's father still plays in Austin, Texas. My father, David Brewster, also used to play when he was young."

With that background, and born and bred in the heart of San Fernando, where the call of the national instrument echoed from almost every street corner, it was easy for the Brewster children to follow in these footsteps.

"I have three brothers and one sister and the eldest three of us started in the panyard together," Brewster recalled. "Another brother started some time after. Our youngest brother is just 17. We started to play pan as part of a competition with our neighbours. That year, Petrotrin Hatters had won the South Zonals and was the first band to win Pan in the 21st Century. Our neighbours told my brother, Cleon, that we would never get to play with Hatters and he had a point to prove. He carried me and I carried my sister Nickie."

And so their romance with Hatter's began. The children convinced their parents to take them to the panyard whenever they had spare time on evenings and weekends so that they could listen to the music.

This habit continued for two weeks until the band members, noticing the children's avid interest, invited them to play. Brewster said Cleon played the double guitar, Nickie played the base while she attempted the tenor pan.

"Players from the different ranges came and showed us the music and we had to try and pick up," she recalled. "At first it was not easy catching up, because they all knew the music well and we were just learning, but we were really excited about the opportunity. We were the first to arrive and the last to leave, and for the time we were in the yard, we just observed and learned. We learned and we taught each other to play on the different instruments and by the next year, 2001, we were playing for Panorama. I was 14 years old."

After that, the Brewster children became stage-side members with the Petrotrin Hatters Steel Orchestra, participating in events whenever they could as long as their school curriculum and private lessons would allow it.

"Sometimes it was difficult because of the hours you had to study and the hours you had to play pan," Brewster shrugged. "I think the people in authority should really look at that, creating a formal system where young people must learn to play the national instrument. This is our national instrument, a part of our heritage, our culture; every Trinbagonian should be able to play the pan."

In 2007, the children were formally taught basic pan theory and to read music by pannist and longtime Hatters member Lennox Fortune. By that time, the Brewster brothers had exited the band, and only Dennell and Nickie remained.

"That helped us a lot, and took us into the UTT Music for Pannists programme which started in 2009 and ended this year," she said. "My sister and I are now, more than ever, bonafide pannists."

She ducked her head and smiled, as if to share a private joke with her unborn baby.

Today, in addition to her duties as an active stage-side member of the band, Brewster is also an executive member, serving as a section leader for the tenor players and the band's secretary since 2009.

Her live-in boyfriend, Trevis Neal, is the band's captain and an arranger.

Last year, Brewster and Neal discovered that she was pregnant. Her pregnancy did not quell her determination to continue performing with the band.

"They won't stop me," she said, smiling mischievously. "I really love my pan. I might not be able to do all that I am accustomed doing, but I am playing and I will continue to play. I live and breathe for pan!"