Music Review: Selecta and the rise of Cindy Sanyu’s genre mastery

Blu 3 was a force to reckon with because of the talent that the group came packing with. There was Lillian Mbabazi’s glorious vocals, Jackie Chandiru’s insane creativity and Cindy Sanyu’s capacity to straddle various genres.

In retrospect, we probably got a better idea of how much talent these girls were packing when they each started off with a solo career. And I think Cindy is the most talented of the three, simply because of the ease with which she occupies various genres.

If you hear her sing soul or jazz, you might think those are genres she majors in. Yet she made her name as a solo artiste within the genre of dancehall.

It was tracks like Selecta that made her a household favorite, using her soulful vocals to beef up the hooks that define dancehall based music while developing her own interpretation of a ragga - muffin. She did it so effectively, her re-invention as a dancehall artiste was accepted universally.
 

 
There is a charisma to Cindy that makes her music immediately palatable – you want her to do well. She brings that charisma to this track, especially with how Selecta is written – it has a common man theme running through it and feels immediately relatable. This approach to her musical content when she started her solo career was deliberately strategic.

It sounds somewhat odd describing a dancehall anthem as strategic but this is an artiste who has barely put a foot wrong since she started her solo career, and you don’t pull that off without some significant planning. Cindy brought deliberate, frenetic chaos to the dancehall genre with her brand of music, and songs like Selecta helped her stand out in this regard.

It combined some traditional aspects of the genre with her interpretation of patois – this helped her own it.