Abhijeet Bhattacharya

Abhijeet Bhattacharya
Abhijeet Bhattacharya at Telly Chakkar's New Talent Awards 2011
Background information
Native name	অভিজিৎ ভট্টাচার্য
Birth name	Abhijeet
Born	Patiram, West Bengal, India
Genres	Bollywood, regional film playback
Occupation(s)	Singer, composer and businessman (real estate)
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1982–present

Abhijeet Bhattacharya, better known as Abhijeet, is a Bollywood playback singer. He has sung songs in more than 15 languages including Bengali, Odia, Bhojpuri, Marathi and Gujarati. He has won one Filmfare Award in 1997. He has also released Indian pop albums.

Early life

Abhijeet was born in a Bengali family in Kanpur, the youngest of four. He passed his matriculation from Ramakrishna Mission Higher Secondary School, Kanpur and Class XII from BNSD Inter College Chunni Ganj, Kanpur and graduated in commerce (B.Com.) from Christ Church College, Kanpur in 1977. He has been singing on stage since 1970. He developed his voice and style of singing by listening to songs by prolific singer such as Kishore Kumar.

Career

Abhijeet left home for Mumbai in 1981 to study chartered accountancy. Due to his fascination for singing and music, he decided to pursue a career in playback singing instead.

He received a call from Rahul Dev Burman to sing for Dev Anand's son's debut film Anand Aur Anand. In this movie, he got the opportunity to sing a song along with his idol Kishor Kumar.

In the 1990s, Abhijeet became one of the choice among the music directors along with Kumar Sanu and Udit Narayan. His songs include work from the film Baaghi, composed by Anand-Milind: "Ek Chanchal Shokh Hasina"," "Chandni Raat Hai" and "Har Kasam Se Badi Hai". This was followed by several chartbusters from movies such as Khiladi, Shola Aur Shabnam both of which were also box office hits. Then in 1994, he performed for movies like Yeh Dillagi ("Ole Ole"), Anjaam, Raja Babu and Main Khiladi Tu Anari. He won the Filmfare Best Playback Singer Award for Yes Boss in 1997. He went on to record for the movies Baadshah, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Josh, Dhadkan, Raaz, Tum Bin, Chalte Chalte, Main Hoon Na, Dil Se Pooch Kidhar Jaana Hai and many others. Grahan (2004) has two songs sung by him: "Kehte Hai Jis Ko" and "Chup Chup" with Kavita Krishnamurty and Asha Bhosle, respectively.

In a career spanning over two decades, he went behind the microphone to lend his voice to the portrayals of Bollywood stars including Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Suniel Shetty, Hrithik Roshan Ajay Devgan and Ranbir Kapoor, and rendered a range such as romantic songs "Badi Mushkil Hai" and "Mere Khyaloon Ki Malika" and fun number "Jab Tak Rahega Samosa Mein Aloo". Abhijeet has worked with veteran music directors like R.D. Burman, Bappi Lahiri and Laxmikant Pyarelal. Most of his popular songs are composed by Anu Malik, Jatin Lalit, Nadeem Shravan and Anand Milind.

Abhijeet has sung duets with many female singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Sadhana Sargam, Anuradha Paudwal, Kavita Krishnamurthy, K.S. Chithra, Sunidhi Chauhan Shreya Ghoshal and Akriti Kakar. Abhijeet has sung maximum duets with Alka Yagnik.

Abhijeet is considered to be voice of Shah Rukh Khan since they first collaborated in 1994 for the song Badi Mushkil Hai from Anjaam. Abhijeet voiced number of songs of Shah Rukh Khan during the 1990s including Yes Boss, Chalte Chalte, Baadshah and Main Hoon Na. But due to disappointment with end credits during Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om (2007), they parted away. Abhijeet last sang for Shah Rukh Khan in the movie Billu Barber (2009) which was their last collaboration.

The composer duo Jatin-Lalit have collaborated with Abhijeet on numerous occasions to give him some of his biggest hits such as "Wada Raha Sanam" from Khiladi, "Yeh Teri Aankhen Jhunki Jhunki" from Fareb, "Main Koi Aisa Geet Gaon" and "Chaand Taare" from Yes Boss, "Zaara Sa Jhoom Loon Main" from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, "Aur Kya" from Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, and "Tauba Tumhare Yeh Ishare" "Suno Na Suno Na" and "Chalte Chalte" from Chalte Chalte.

Non-film music

Abhijeet has recorded non-film pop music. He released two albums, Main Deewana Hoon and Tapori No.1. Later he launched Aashiqui. He released a pop album, called Tere Bina. Which Was a Big Hit on that Time. He got MTV Music Asia Award for that Album. "Kabhin Yaadon mein aaon" is a Hit Song of all time from that album.

On 3 May 2006, he released another non-film album called Lamhe. In 2014, he released his album titled AB consist of Seven Songs, penned by Sameer..He also released Bengali pop albums and Tagore song albums. Recently he recorded a new song with June Banerjee at T-Series Studio in September 2016. That will be his Pop song collaboration with T-Series after a Decade.^[1]

Controversies

On 6 May 2015, when sessions court in Mumbai sentenced actor Salman Khan to five years in jail in connection with the 2002 hit-and-run case, Abhijeet came out in support of Salman by tweeting "Roads are meant for cars and dogs not for people sleeping on them". This raised anger among several Twitter users as well in popular media for allegedly making insensitive remarks as well as opening himself to criticism by members of media or others that Abhijeet is equating homeless people to be the same as dogs.^[2]

In a similar tweet, he said "Kutta rd pe soyega kutte ki maut marega, roads garib ke baap ki nahi hai I ws homles an year nvr slept on rd" (Dogs sleep on the road and die like dogs. Roads are not ancestral properties of poor. I was homeless for a year and never slept on roads). Abhijeet clarified to a news channel "Nobody should die on the roads as dogs". He further stated that the death of the poor man was a loss to his family members and by not sleeping on the roads such deaths can be and should be avoided. He said and so did other people on the same news channel program that sleeping on the roads/pavements is dangerous as the roads are extremely busy. Many members of the public and media want the government to do more to help avoid such preventable incidents. Unfortunately a large number of people sleep overnight on the roads in cities in India due to the lack of means to buy or rent a house while they eke out a living doing menial labor.^[3][4][5][6]

In October 2015, he called Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali "dengue artist" from terrorist country,^[7] on which Indian artists like Shabana Azmi, designer Wendell Rodricks and Mahesh Bhatt expressed displeasure.^[7]

In July 2016, Abhijeet was arrested by the Mumbai police and release later on bail, for allegedly abusing journalist Swati Chaturvedi^[8] online on Twitter. The arrest was at the complaint of Aam Aadmi Party spokesperson Preeti Sharma Menon with Mumbai's BKC Cyber Cell. According to the Indian Express, the FIR for the online abuse was filed on charges of public obscenity and outrage of modesty.^[9]

Awards and nominations

Honours

• Uttar Pradesh Gaurav Samman^[10]
• Yash Bharati Samman, 2013

Filmfare Awards

Filmfare Best Male Playback Award (Won):

Filmfare Best Male Playback Award (Nominated)

• Screen Award for Best Male Playback in 1997 for "Chand Taare" from Yes Boss

Notable songs

|| 2016 ||Mahayoddha Rama || "Chalo Banao Setu" ||Shukhwinder Singh, Aadesh Shrivastava ||Aadesh Shrivastava |}

References

External links

• Abhijeet Bhattacharya at the Internet Movie Database
• Abhijeet Bhattacharya Rediff