The National-Award winning trio requires no introduction. Since 1997, Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa have composed music for over 50 soundtracks across five languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and English. Time and again, the trio have also tried scouting for new talent from the independent avenues, which has reflected in their soundtracks for movies such as, 'Dil Chahta Hai', 'Wake Up Sid', 'Rock On' and the very recent 'Mirzya'.We caught up with the ace composers to gain a perspective from the other side of the grass, in the below editorial.Mirzya may have not received the kind of box office success that it deserved but one cannot deny that the music was the biggest strength of the film. The blend of folk with psychedelic trance in the soundtrack was rare and unheard of. Is it a boon for traditional and Indian sounds if given a contemporary treatment or does it lose its sheen with contemporarisation?Shankar: Well it all depends. If you see 'Mirzya' had the ability to carry off this kind of stuff. And a lot of people have been doing such progressive blends of music using folk elements with electronic. It has been around for quite some time with people like Peter Gabriel doing it often. But you know it has been niche. It has not been used often. You know World Music was big in the 80s and 90s. Where media channels like the BBC use that form of music for their news channel IDs, because it was the most popular music then. But now, it's kind of special when you do that kind of music and I don't think there is anything wrong in blending the two. If one can help popularize the form of folk using contemporary ways, I don't think there is anything wrong with it.Why doesn't mainstream music collaborate with independent talent often inspite of the latter being celebrated in equal measure? Do you think tapping independent talent could break the dearth of creativity that's currently present in mainstream music and is being talked about?Ehsaan: I don't think there is any lack of creativity in mainstream music. It's just the way trends have been in the last couple of years with very traditional kind of music coming out. By traditional, I don't mean Indian classical but the traditional Bollywood kind of phase. Similar incident of that happened in the 90s but now they have run out of that as well and are now doing all cover versions of Hindi film songs. It's all a phase and it will pass. It will come back to regional music and good compositions being accepted into the film industry. Having said that, about the indie industry the thing is, I don't know if the indie lot are interested in Bollywood. Indie people are not very fond of Bollywood. Though Bollywood feels the same but there are people like us who appreciate the indie scene. Because we, in our own approach to Bollywood music itself are very international. You have to be commercial because music making is a commercial format. Being commercial doesn't mean that you are being typical and you can't be progressive. With indie artists, I see a lot of them make more music in English and not much in Hindi, though there are a few Hindi bands. But I think it will be fantastic if their music could be used in the contemporary mainstream format. But unlike Indian Ocean, you don't listen much to indie music in Hindi films, which director Anurag Kashyap has done.As composers it must be very crucial to keep an eye for emerging talent within the independent community. In such a scenario, how much does the onus of choosing new talent lies in the hands of the composers or are they at the disposal of the producers?Loy: No, not necessarily. The thing is that a good singer or a good artist will be appreciated by everybody. There was a time when everyone would go to select musicians as Uditji Narayan, Sonu Nigam and the Mangeskhar sisters. But now the entire force is huge. It's not a date where you have one singer singing your song, we're almost open to bringing new artists. We have given chances to many indie artists to come in as singers, which we do. Whether it's Siddharth Basrur, Nikhil Dsouza or Vivienne Pocha. Even Vishal Dadlani began from a rock band. So was Aditi Singh Sharma who started out independently.Do you think music composers can do a lot more in bringing the independent musicians to the forefront?Ehsaan: Well, if you talk about Bollywood, there is only that many films that we do. It's not like we are doing a hundred films, a year to introduce new artists. laughs. We do two or three films maximum, in a year. So there are only that many artists that we can introduce. But with social media around, we are always promoting other people's music on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. I've done so many of it myself. Promoting and sharing someone's music with my ability so that it can reach out to a wider audience. The above editorial was compiled as an initiative for the Radio City Freedom Awards 4.0.