Pratap Roy, popularly known as Baby da, is a musician, composer and arranger of West Bengal, India. Basically he is a pianist but well known as a piano accordion player. He has accompanied most of the eminent singers of Bengal in both studio recordings and live performances. He has accompanied almost all eminent singers of Bollywood. He has also played music in various notable Bengali movies backing score.
Background
Pratap Roy was born on 28 June 1938 in Kolkata, Bengal Presidency, India. He is the only son of Sukumar Roy and Snehalata Roy. He showed his musical interest at an early age and started to learn piano from his mother at an age of five. He also started learning vocal songs at his childhood from the eminent teachers named Bijan Bala Ghosh Dastidar, Suren Majumdar, Nirmal Sen Gupta.
He passed away on 1st September 2024.
Education
His schooling was started at St. Pauls Mission School where he got his extended piano lessons from Mr. L. J Martin. After passing school final from Mitra Institution, he was admitted to Bangabasi College and in 1961, he graduated from this college.
Career
HIs professional musical career started at 1964. His first recording was with his friend renowned Tanmay Chatterjee under musical supervision of famous music director Salil Chowdhury. He did his first musical accompaniment with famous Bengali singer Banasree Sengupta.Later he took part in numerous recording sessions with popular singers of Bengal and Bollywood such as, Manna Dey, Hemanta Mukherjee, Kishore Kumar, Shyamal Mitra, Subir Sen, Dhananjay Bhattacharya, Bhupen Hazarika, Pintu Bhattacharya, Amit Kumar, Sandhya Mukherjee, Haimanti Sukla, Arundhati Home Choudhury, Firoza Begum, Sabina Yasmin, Madhuri Chattopadhyay, Runa Laila, Kavita Krishnamurthy and many more. Pratap Roy has accompanied Manna Dey with piano accordion for more than 40 years.
He worked for various movie's backing score under the supervision of Satyajit Ray, Hemanta Mukherjee and with many others.
He was with Calcutta Youth Choir from 1967. Then he joined Calcutta Choir on 1990 as an assistant music director. He is now the President of Calcutta Choir. Pratap Roy has found a musical institution named 'Harmony, A House of Music'.
Connections
Pratap Roy married Swapna Roy on 13 May 1971.