Check this out... You're a kid, living in a tin shack off the side of a busy highway in India.  Daily, you the hit the streets as a rag picker trying to make some coinage to help out your family.  All the while, you got this beat in your head, a musical prodigy if you will, and you don't even know what to do with it.  Then comes along Project Ahimsa, the organization that raises funds to further music education and ambition to children in worldwide slums. 

The above story is true, and it belongs to that of Ahmedabad, India resident Ganesh Barriya, who thanks to Project Ahimsa, is featured on the upcoming compilation Global Lingo with tracks like "Liberation 3000" and "He Manov Visvaas" (both are beyond awesome!)  Still sharing that tin shack with his parents & five brothers, not to mention no electricity or running water, his involvement with this album may be a huge step forward to his future as a professional musician.
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“When we started Project Ahimsa, we wanted to focus on cross-cultural understanding through music,” explains Project Ahimsa co-founder and album executive producer Vijay Chattha. “Out of all the things kids need, why music? It instills discipline, builds confidence and increases communication between kids, family, and the greater world, all tools for success no matter where you’re from,”

In fact, all seventeen tracks off of Global Lingo were created by a variety of artists who have similar upbringings as Barriya, and shown through a variety of genres from afrobeat to my personal fave, Punjabi reggae.  A total must listen: "Dolare" by Funkadesi. 
“Our main goal in the end,” Chattha reflects, “was just to demonstrate what these kids—the real ‘slumdog musicaires’ I guess you could call them—can do if they have an opportunity. That people from around the world can make something connected on a universal theme: music itself.” Sukhadia adds, “Music can heal and connect communities. We all just need to understand one another. Global Lingo proves it can happen through music.”

Project Ahimsa's Global Lingo will be out August 11, 2009.
For more info, check out their website.