FORMER Idols Eastern and Southern Africa contestant Penjani Ng’uni (left) has released her debut album entitled Alansunga.
The 13-track Gospel album is a culmination of four years work by the 24-year-old Lusaka-based singer-cum-entrepreneur.

In an interview, Penjani, who also participated in the Celtel Star Search competition in 2006, and was runner-up in the inaugural youth entrepreneurial show My Own Boss the following year, said the album encourages listeners to develop a relationship with Christ.

“If I was to say something more about the album, it’s really about relationships. When I look at every song, it’s pretty much about relationship with Christ, and it is that relationship that we develop with Him that will see us through this journey called life.”

The daughter of Emmanuel Ng’uni, one of Zambia’s foremost Gospel folk musicians, Penjani began singing at the age of three. With encouragement from her parents, she nurtured her gift through the years, singing at Sunday School and the youth choir at her church, and occasionally filling in as a background singer for her father.

She says it was after her participation in the Celtel Star Search in 2006 that she began heading into the studio to work on her album. “I think Star Search was a great jump-start to my music career. At that time when I participated in Star Search, I think I was in my last year of college.

It brought a new lease of life, a new lease of understanding of what goes on in professional music circles. I learnt things that perhaps I never knew and never appreciated. So there was a lot of learning for me, and unlearning certain things! I had a chance to mingle with Zambia’s next singing generation, if I can put it like that.

I could safely actually say that a lot of people who have a passion for music and are making a mark in the industry right now have passed through Star Search, such as John Chiti, Sutu and Levins, and a few others.”
The same year, she established Divine Touch, a wedding and corporate décor enterprise that she continues to run with her sisters today. “I actually started entrepreneurial activities in my sixth grade.

I used to make little soap baskets, and from then on the business grew, bit by bit. Recently, we’ve started doing wedding dresses and gowns. We also do corporate décor...whether product launches, or end of year show room decors and things like that. So it’s pretty much a small multi-faceted business that I thank God for. Primarily, it’s a family business; me and my sisters.”

Following her participation in My Own Boss in 2007, Penjani tried her luck at Idols Eastern and Southern Africa, where she reached the last 24 stage of the show. She described the experience as inspiring.

“Idols, yes, was exciting. The past shows were local and now I was doing something that was at a continental level. It was restricted to participants from Eastern and Southern Africa, and was broadcast across the continent. The Idols organisers would place us in groups with people of different nationalities, and you get to do something there as in come up with a song and do a song and things like that. The cross national/cultural exposure was very valuable in that particular one. And also to see how people, our friends in other countries run things. I mean I was always restricted to the Zambian sense of doing things and now I could see how other people do it and it was much more serious. It was actually very inspiring”.

Alansunga contains mostly self-penned songs, including To The Mount, which was the first song Penjani ever wrote, at the age of 14. Other songs were written by Ccippo, Mg and Mutamula Mwale. The album is produced by Mg, Mwale, Ccippo and Blessingtone Malenga and David.