Ignite your rhythm like never before with my drum lessons
Ryan Shah began music at an early age. His teachers include Kathy Brooker, Jeff Sipe, Pralad Khatri, Ustad Shafaat Khan, Ustad Sabir Khan, Dr. Pranab Kumar Das, Mike Clark, Frank Katz, Kenwood Dennard and Pete Zeldman among others.
Ryan attended Drummers Collective in New York city in winter of 1995 and in fall of 1996 attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
In summer of 1998 Ryan was the drummer in the house band for the Fox 97 Ultimate Oldies Show at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, GA, backing Freda Payne, J.J. Jackson, Sonny Geraci and The Crystals and performing before a capacity crowd of 80,000+ people.
In 1999 and 2003 Ryan was awarded grants from the South Carolina Arts Commission for the performance of original music.
On his second trip to Kolkata in 2001 he formed the band Time Travil, fusing elements of classical Indian and jazz music. Time Travil performed in Kolkata at Rabindra Sadan, St. Xavier’s College, Royal Calcutta Golf Club and on the Tara Bangla TV show “On Date Special”. Time Travil also performed in the US at The Knitting Factory in New York and in the Charleston Cultural Arts Festival in South Carolina among other venues in the southeast and New England. A 9-star review was published about the band in Modern Drummer magazine.
Since 2003 Ryan began composing music under the name of TIME SPY featuring the kheyal vocalist Pandit Siddharth Shankar of Kolkata, India.
In 2003 Ryan taught drum set at Calcutta School of Music in Sunny Park, Kolkata, India.
In the winter of 2004 Ryan performed in Tanmoy Bose’s fusion band Taal Tantra and with The Violin Brothers at venues in Kolkata such as Salt Lake stadium, Swabhumi, Calcutta Cricket and Football Club, Calcutta Club and Nazrul Manch among others.
In 2004 Ryan played drums for the Hip Hop band Mental Notes in New York city.
Since 2005 Ryan has been studying the Farrukhabad and Benares Gharanas of Tabla under Dr. Panab Kumar Das in Kolkata.
In the winter of 2005 Ryan performed in Kolkata with Gokul Das (Dhak) and also with Monojith Datta ‘Kauchuda’ (conga).
In the summer of 2006 Ryan performed on tabla in various groups with Jeff Sipe in the southeast US.
Ryan’s first live performance of classical Indian music was in December of 2012, accompanying Pt. Siddhartha Shankar in Puri, Orissa for Orissa Music Circle. Since then Ryan has performed at Gundicha Mandir and other halls in both Orissa and West Bengal India as well as Hyderabad, Andra Pradesh and at DAV College in Kathmandu, Nepal. He also performed charitably at orphanages such as Chandrasekhar Academy and Usthi Foundation in Orissa, India in the winter of 2015.
In fall of 2017 Ryan performed tabla solo on the main stage of the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival in Pittsboro, North Carolina.
Since 2017 he has performed around the southeast accompanying Brother Jim Hadley the One Man Band.
Ryan also teaches tabla and drum set in South Carolina and Kolkata, India.