Pritam
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Pritam Chakraborty (Bengali: প্রীতম চক্রবর্তী; Hindi: प्रीतम चक्रबोर्ती), better known as Pritam (Bengali: প্রীতম; Hindi: प्रीतम) (IPA: [priːt̪om] ITRANS:prItam), is a music composer from India who is presently based out of Mumbai.
Early life
Born in Kolkata, Pritam is the son of Prabodh Chakraborty, who runs a music school for children. Pritam gained his early training in music from his father and learned to play the guitar while still in school.
After completing his schooling at St. James' School and college education at Presidency College, he went to a music school. Pritam joined a Bangla band, Chandrabindoo. Before that he formed another band with his Presidency batchmates, called "Jotugriher Pakhi". They even have a cassette released to their credit at that time. In January 1993, Pritam joined the Film and Television Institute in Pune to undertake a course in sound recording and sound engineering. During this time, he was offered a chance to compose background music for a film by Hungarian filmmaker Istvan Gaal. He also learned African music from musicologist Kedar Avati.
Career
Having completed his education, Pritam moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in Bollywood. During his stay in Mumbai, he began composing ad jingles, and became friendly with a number of other young men struggling to make it big, like Shantanu Moitra, Rajkumar Hirani, Sanjay Gadhvi and Chandrajeet Ganguly, also known as Jeet, who played the guitar with Anup Jalota.
Pritam got his first break when Gadhvi was signed on to direct Tere Liye and he, in turn, signed on his friends Jeet and Pritam as music composers. Though the music was well received, the film sank at the box office. However, in 2002 Yashraj Films signed Gadhvi up to direct Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai, for which the Jeet-Pritam duo once again composed the music. All the songs from that movie were chartbusters, and the duo had hit the big time.
Pritam is now actively involved in mentoring and judging new talent on Zee TV's singing competition show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2009.
Solo career
Jeet and Pritam worked together for only one more film which was Mudda-The Issue, before amicably parting. After the separation, Pritam's career as a solo musician stalled as he signed a series of flops like Fun2shh - Dudes In The 10th Century and Agnipankh. The films sank at the box office and with them, Pritam’s music too. However, in 2004, Pritam composed the music for Sanjay Gadhvi's second film, Dhoom, which was a runaway success. The film did well and the music topped the charts.
Pritam followed up the success of Dhoom with a string of chartbusting numbers after a year for Chocolate, Garam Masala and Gangster. Also he composed the music for Dhoom 2, the sequel to Dhoom. Most recently he composed the music for Life in a Metro and formed a Band named Metro.
Accusations of plagiarism
Pritam has been accused of plagiarism on several occasions, wherein he has copied the music for a number of his most popular Hindi film songs from various artists from around the world (especially Asia), without giving credit to the original artists themselves [1][2][3]. In some cases he has bought the copyright and given due credit too[4].
Taiwanese singer Lee-Hom Wang and his record label Sony BMG Music Entertainment Ltd. are suing Tips Films, the distibutors and rights holders of Race(for which Pritam composed the music), for $320,000 in damages, accusing them of plagiarising his song Deep in the Bamboo Grove(Chu Lin Shen Chu) into Zara Zara touch me from the film.[5]