Eric Du'Sean Harland was born November 8, 1976, in Houston, Texas. He found acceptance in music during a difficult adolescence, learning orchestral percussion and idolizing Elvin Jones by age fourteen. He won first chair with the Regional and All-State Texas Jazz Band in 1992-93 and received a special citation for Outstanding Musicianship from the International Association of Jazz Educators in 1994. Wynton Marsalis discovered him at a high school workshop and encouraged him to study in New York City; Harland attended the Manhattan School of Music on a full scholarship.

Widely regarded as one of the most in-demand drummers of his generation, Harland has appeared on close to 400 recordings and multiple film scores, working extensively with Terence Blanchard, Joshua Redman, McCoy Tyner, Charles Lloyd, Dave Holland, Walter Smith III, and Chris Potter, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile. He is a member of Charles Lloyd's Quartet, Dave Holland's Prism, and Taylor Eigsti's Trio, and in 2010 co-founded the cooperative quartet James Farm with pianist Aaron Parks, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and bassist Matt Penman; Harland had earlier appeared on Parks's 2008 Blue Note debut, Invisible Cinema.

As a leader, Harland released his debut, Voyager: Live by Night, in 2011, followed by Vipassana (2014), 13th Floor (2019), and Vipassana II (2026).

Harland's status as one of the most recorded drummers of his generation, spanning close to 400 albums as a sideman alongside a growing catalog as a leader, reflects both his technical range and his consistent ability to serve wildly different musical contexts, from Charles Lloyd's spiritually inflected quartet to the cooperative post-bop of James Farm.