Ryan Shah was born April 13, 1976 in Columbia, Missouri and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. He began studying drum set at age six, and began performing at age twelve. He studied under mentor Jeff Sipe (a.k.a. "Apt. Q258") in Atlanta in 1994 and in 1995 Ryan attended Drummers Collective in New York and studied under Fred Klatz, Mike Clark, Bobby Sanabria, Duduka da Fonseca, Pete Zeldman, Mike Lauren, Sandy Gennaro and Kim Plainfield. In 1996, he attended Berklee College of Music and studied under Skip Hadden and Kenwood Dennard.

Ryan has done both live and studio work for local Rock and Jazz outfits around the southeast and New England areas. He has recorded for classical composer David McNally. He also performed in the house band for the 1998 Fox 97 "Ultimate Oldies" Concert held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia, backing J.J. Jackson, Freda Payne, The Crystals, and Sonny Geraci.

From August 1997 to January 1999, Ryan and two local Columbia musicians (Zack Jones, Franklin Caggiano) joined together in Medulla Peltor, an improvisational trio that fused the influences of Led Zeppelin, John Coltrane Quartet, The Meters, Miles Davis, Anthony Braxton and Mahavishnu Orchestra to name a few.

While living in New York and Boston, Ryan attended many Indian classical music concerts and developed an intense love for the art. In 1997, he began study of Tabla with Pralad Khutri in Charlotte, NC (a former student of Pt. Nikhil Ghosh).

In 1998 Ryan established Tusharjee Productions, an organization that arranged Indian classical music concerts in South Carolina. Some of the artists he brought to South Carolina were: Nandkishore Muley, Anupama Bhagwat, Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande, Ramesh Mishra, and Sabir Khan.

In the summer of 1999 Ryan travelled to Calcutta to begin studying with the maestro Ustad Sabir Khan of the Farrukhabad Gharana.

On his second trip to ..