Dana began studying guitar at the age of ten and continued this study for the next nine years, spending the last two years studying classical guitar with a master student of Segovia. After attending an inspiring concert of North Indian classical music with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Ustad Zakir Hussain, she began an intensive study of sarode, tabla and vocal music at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California. After six years of study, she began to concentrate solely on the tabla with Ustad Zakir Hussain and his illustrious father Ustad Alla Rakha. Initially a member of Zakir-ji’s rhythm ensemble, the Tal Vadyam Rhythm Band, she went on to be a founding member of his band Zakir Hussain and the Rhythm Experience. She performed with the Rhythm Experience for over seventeen years, touring the United States, Canada, and Europe with the band.
Dana spent considerable time in India as part of her music education. Completing an intensive period of study of tabla with Ustad Alla Rakha at his school in Mumbai, she was invited by Zakir-ji to accompany him on the annual bus tour of India sponsored by the ITC Sangeet Research Academy of Kolkatta and performed with him at several music festivals during this tour. As a recipient of the prestigious Performing Arts Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, she again journeyed to India and spent six months in residence at the Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkatta, researching vocal accompaniment styles on tabla. At the invitation of Zakir-ji she performed a tabla solo in Mumbai in 2007 at the annual event in memory of the legendary Ustad Alla Rakha, Homage to Abbaji.
In the realm of North Indian classical music she has performed with many artists including Ustad Sultan Khan, Pandit Krishna Bhatt, Terry Riley, Pandit Rajiv Taranath, Antonia Minnecola, Marnie Ris, Bruce Hamm, Peter Van Gelder, Christopher Ris, Manose Newa and Joanna Mack. In the realm of jazz and world music Dana has performed with Ustad Zakir Hussain, Airto Moreira, Micky Hart, Fazal Qureshi, Vince Delgado, Tommy Kesecker, George Brooks, Kai Echkardt, Jack Perla, Pollyanna Bush and Stephen Iverson.
She has participated in a number of projects that combined musical styles from around the world. Among these are performances with Zakir Hussain and the Rhythm Experience at Bumbershoot Festival, Monterey World Music Festival and Wembley Conference Center, London; Anthony Brown’s Asian American Orchestra on India and Africa, featured in the annual John Coltrane Memorial Concert at Northeastern University; Katha Dance Theater’s Naari: The Women, a dance production of Kathak, Flamenco and Tap; Obiba at the Sausalito Arts Festival and Noe Music, San Francisco; A tabla solo performance at the Festival of Tabla, Los Angeles, and with Ustad Zakir Hussain at SFJazz’s inaugural season in his piece commissioned by SFJazz titled Rapt No Strings.
She is dedicated to sharing the teachings she has received over the last 40 years in the classical art of tabla with many aspiring students in the San Francisco Bay Area and continues to perform with many classical musicians, dancers, jazz musicians and contemporary artists.