Critics are praising the new album – called “Fine Print” -- by Zambian singer Marsha Moyo. It includes a song and video – called "Faith is a Wonderful Thing" – that includes the Soweto Gospel Choir. The album is a sample of jazz, blues and pop tracks. Her first album, "Dark Child", received four Kora All-Africa Music awards.
Marsha Moyo's rise to fame has not been easy. She has been criticized for leaving a lucrative job at a leading sugar producing company in her home country Zambia. She says she started a media monitoring company called Ad Track and worked for the Zambia Sugar Company for several years before deciding to return to her childhood passion - music.
After quitting, Marsha recorded a demo tape and sent it to a leading record company in South Africa called Sheer Sounds -- which liked the music and released her first album ‘Dark Child’ in 2002.
That was her big break.
She performed alongside some of the greatest musicians in Africa and got nominated three times at the Kora All africa Awards in 2004 and 2005. In 2004, a top music chart in South Africa ranked her above American stars Michael Jackson and Britney Spears.
"It was very critically appraised," she says, "I had the opportunity to travel in promotional performances not only as far as Johannesburg but also for FESPAM which is Festival for Pan African Music. I was the first world’s recording artist to perform at the Burj-al-Arab hotel in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) for three months."
Apart from music, Marsha writes books that encourage women to rise up and reach the top.
She says the book called "Women Celebrated" "was about the tenacity and resilience of women and girls throughout the world [as well as] a song encouraging them to continue. Not just to see successful women in magazines and think they just happen to be there, but to see how they found themselves from points A to Z, which is the magazine stage and the struggles that they endured and the challenges that they overcame."
The book has biographical features of six women including Winnie Mandela and the Queen of Jordan who did the foreword.
With the new 11 track album called the Fine Print – recorded in South Africa and England --Marsha hopes to reach a stage where people all over the world can hear her voice.