Before Amit Trivedi became one of contemporary Hindi cinema’s most distinctive composer-singers, he was an advertising musician trying to make an independent track. In a conversation with trade analyst Komal Nahta on Game Changers: The Music Series, Trivedi retraced how a friendship with singer Shilpa Rao, and her insistence on pitching their work to filmmakers, pulled him into the film industry.
The independent song that started it
Trivedi met Rao during his advertising days, when both were moving through studio work. He was drawn to her voice, and the two decided to record something together outside the ad world. The result was ‘Dhol Yara Dhol,’ an independent song Trivedi saw as a launchpad for a music video.
His plan, he said, was to take the track to platforms like MTV or Sony and to music companies. “I wanted to make a music video,” he recalled. Rao, however, had a different route in mind. She began carrying the songs to filmmakers.
A call that changed course
The turning point came when Rao told Trivedi she had played the songs to Anurag Kashyap and asked him to meet the director. Trivedi said he was “shocked” and asked why she was pushing toward films when they had planned to stay independent.
His hesitation was not about the music. Trivedi said he enjoyed film songs but could not see himself as a music director. He described himself as introverted, with no knowledge of the industry, and found the film world overwhelming. That fear lasted until the meeting itself.
“I went to Bandra to meet Anurag sir. He was amazing! He took all my thoughts and fears away from my head,” Trivedi said in the conversation.
An oral history, before the hits
The recollection arrives as part of a series that records conversations with singers, composers and other musicians about their creative journeys. For followers of Hindi film music, such accounts fill in an under-documented stretch: the years before a composer becomes a known name, when the path into film work was neither guaranteed nor obvious.
Trivedi’s account is specific enough to be useful. It names the track, the intermediary and the director, and it identifies the real distance between independent music and film music as professional rather than creative. His stated plan was to approach platforms; it took Rao’s more direct outreach to change the destination.
Why the memory matters
The story is a compact reminder of how accident and advocacy shape Hindi film music careers:
- A single independent track, carried by a collaborator, led to a filmmaker’s door.
- Trivedi’s early reluctance was about access and industry knowledge, not craft.
- Kashyap’s response removed the barrier between an independent musician and film work.
Trivedi would go on to establish himself as one of the prominent names in contemporary Hindi film music, spanning films across genres and styles. But the anecdote places that identity in a moment when he had to be convinced to enter it—by a friend who saw a film career before he did.
Source: Bollywood Hungama
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