Edwin Madu creates music under the name “Dwin, The Stoic”. He is a songwriter, performer, composer, poet and one-half of the indie band, Ignis Brothers.
If you like Sam Smith, Adele, James Arthur or Passenger, Dwin, the Stoic’s music is definitely for you. He creates music across several genres including Afropop, Adult contemporary, chamber pop, soft rock, alt-pop, folk and EDM.
Following the release of his single GKW/Winning Bread, 49th had a chat with Dwin about music and his process for creating the songs on his project.
Zia: Hi Dwin! You dropped GKW/Winning Bread yesterday, how are you feeling?
Dwin: Well, drop day was also my birthday and it was interesting. I don’t usually like birthdays but I liked doing that because it was a way for me to have a nice thing happen around the birthday and whatnot. I also think people really enjoyed getting them on my birthday.
Zia: That’s nice. So, Dwin, the Stoic. I know where Dwin comes from, why ‘the Stoic’?
Dwin: I never really used the word ‘stoic’ before I heard it in a Mumford & Sons song. I think the line goes “a stoic mind and a bleeding heart”. I went to check up what the word meant and I liked it, mostly because I knew the songs I was writing at the time were honest and emotional and touchy-feely. The stoics are supposed to be you know, whatever life throws at you, you just take it like that – no good, no bad. It’s kind of like a contrast but it’s something I enjoy. I was just going to go with Dwin initially but there’s another fellow named Dwin who’s also putting out music, so I had to put ‘the stoic’ in there.
Zia: How’s your musical journey been so far? From primary school? Were you in the choir?
Dwin: Funny enough, no, never. I’ve never been in the choir. I never really considered myself the best vocalist – I knew I could sing but I felt that there was a level of vocal dexterity required to be in the choir. And yeah, there were a lot of issues dealing with self-esteem then but with that in mind, I focused a lot of my strength on writing songs. Music for me has always been a thing – when my dad was in the university, he DJ-ed to pay for stuff, and when he was a lot younger, he almost ran away from home to join some band. When I started talking about music as a thing I wanted to do, he wasn’t too surprised. I started writing songs some time in secondary school then it carried on into university. I wrote the first version of ‘The Lonely’ when I was at Covenant University.
Eventually, I kept writing but it still didn’t feel like I could have a music career. When I came out of uni, I did a bunch of stuff that didn’t leave me time to do music. I mean now, I’m still working at Zikoko but it’s more balanced with the music. Nobody’s throwing money at you to do music so you kinda need to sort that out by yourself. Deciding to do music happened when I had worked for a while and saved up some money and I hit up my friend who worked as a producer and said “Yeah I want to make an album now.” I decided to make an album because I knew what the industry wanted – you drop a few singles and let people get used to you before you drop a project. A part of me is glad that I was naïve and just did what I wanted to do anyways. Heavy Heart came out and became a thing. There’s Ignis Brothers, of course, we put out an album in 2020 even though we had been writing songs since 2017.
I wanted to put out my sophomore album this year, if not this year then next year but I have plans for it to be a visual album that’s why it’s taking a lot of time. The tentative title of the visual album is ‘Speaking of Love’. This year started really interesting, with ‘Streets’, I really wanted to drop ‘Streets’ and ‘The Tree’. ‘The Tree’ was supposed to be that song where I showed people that I didn’t just do ballads, I too would like to make things for the club sometime. It might be sad lyrics over a mad beat. After ‘Streets’ I looked at the songs I had written down and I wanted to balance the discography a bit. I wanted my new fans to get a sense of that range with Ifunayam to The Tree to Streets and then have GKW and Winning Bread.
GKW and Winning Bread were just supposed to be these two singles that dropped together and showed how I approached music from two different angles – one from a more ballad-heavy side and the other would be more upbeat. The production for GKW was something I already had in mind so the first time I sent a sample to Grndmstr, I was drumming while I sang. For Winning Bread, the first thing I had were the words, I didn’t really have a melody in mind. Then I wanted to rewrite the first verse of GKW, so I wrote a different verse with a different melody and that ended up being GKW (reprise).
Zia: Yeah the reprise of GKW is an infinitely sadder song than the original. Was it a conscious thing?
Dwin: It wasn’t exactly intentional but to be fair, GKW is a sad song but you don’t notice because you’re dancing. In writing that second song, I realised that there was a way that the reprise sounds heavier than the original. I decided to just lean into that and it was really just a fun session of me and Rhaffy trying to decide which violin sounded best and what to do with my voice.
Zia: You work at Zikoko as their editor-in-chief and that’s Edwin. So there’s Edwin the editor and Dwin, the musician. Is there a distinction or a clashing of personalities?
Dwin: I don’t imagine that I do now, both of these roles are in the public. For a long time, I could be a different person on LinkedIn for example, and then be a musician somewhere else because my jobs at that time were very backstage where nobody needed to know that I was a musician. But right now, I work in media where I wouldn’t have to separate both sides of myself. I’m learning to blend both of them – at Zikoko trying to create what is essentially the most important youth publication in Nigeria and on the other side trying to make a lot of good music.
Zia: We appreciate your efforts. What’s a typical day in the life of Dwin?
Dwin: Depends on the day – if it’s a weekday, I’m typically in a lot of meetings. There’s a lot of admin work that comes with being an editor-in-chief and a lot less creative work. With music these days, I’m mostly creating content. A lot of the songs that need to be created; I’m done writing them, for the next three projects. I’m working more on the business side of music, trying to plan time for me to get into the studio to record music.
Zia: You opened for Fireboy at his Fire Concert in January; how did you feel opening for him?
Dwin: It was really cool, I think Fireboy is really talented. One tiny regret I have is I hadn’t released Streets before then. It happened out of the blue – his tour manager was at a show I had performed at and towards the end of the year he texted me and was like, “Do you want to open for Fireboy?” and I was like, “Hell yeah.” It was new, being in front of all those people and they didn’t know who I was, that was something to grapple with. It’s kind of easier when your crowd knows you and you’re calmer.
Zia: Speaking of crowds that know you, when is the next edition of Wine with Dwin?
Dwin: This is mostly on my manager’s head. I’d have to go back and ask her.
Zia: Help us beg please, we’re waiting. You have a band, the Ignis Brothers. When you write songs, how do you decide which song is for Dwin, the Stoic, and which one is for the Ignis Brothers?
Dwin: At the time when I was writing for the album, I knew when a song was meant for the Ignis Brothers. Most times, I write with the band or I’d just get a feeling, that this song was meant for the Ignis Brothers.
Zia: When you sing, you’re very first-person but when you’re talking about these songs, you’re talking about them in the third person, a protagonist. Do you create an alter ego that has his own universe with these songs as themes or it’s just separate characters?
Dwin: In some of the songs, there are actual characters – take Ifunayam as a song, because it’s part of the album, the visual album I told you about. The song tells the story of Ifunayam, which is a scenario where the song is written with an actual character in mind. Over time, I assign a random character because I cannot say that all my songs are about me technically – there are times when it’s about a combination of people. In all, it’s less about the person, I’m writing about the moment and I think that’s why people can relate to the songs.
Zia: I noticed that you used very descriptive words, you’re quite literally telling a story. Is that a conscious decision?
Dwin: Yes, I constantly write music with some sort of visuals in mind. Because I’m telling stories of moments, in GKW for instance, there’s ‘walk across the city, saw the sights so pretty.’ In that moment, you’re seeing a person walking the streets and it’s about the moment. I think it helps people connect to the music a bit more. A story is always the choice I’d make. I write music for moments and it’ll be hard for me to do that without telling a cohesive story.
Zia: Winning Bread is a very unique name for a song, what was your process like for writing it?
Dwin: I started with the first line, ‘You dance, not cause you want to’. The way songs come to me, the first line kind of dictates how the song goes. So from that first line, I knew that it was going to be a second-person kind of song, and I usually made songs like that existential. And ‘You dance, not cause you want to’ just screamed capitalism at me, just screamed life, just being an adult and doing things you don’t want to but you know you have to because if you don’t, what else are you going to do? And that story kind of continues in ‘You laugh not cause you want to’ and I feel like it really relates to people just being tired but still putting on a smile because you’re tired of crying. The chorus really had me thinking, because I was like, it’s about capitalism so what are the many euphemisms of making money. There was getting dough, being a breadwinner, all of them very bread related. I couldn’t go with getting dough because it’ll look like a rap song so breadwinner, winning bread it was. Why I was stuck with it was because of the line that comes after it, ‘losing breath’. You win something, you lose something but what you’re losing is life. ‘Life can be a trip sometimes’ was the last line to be written, I kind of just put it there and then looked at it like ‘wow, this is a very sad song’. And then I put in the ‘what will be, will be’ line because we’ve all acknowledged all the ways that life is shit but there are times when it can be good.
Zia: Right, right. The project has a very downward rhythm with GKW being upbeat and winning bread then the GKW (reprise). What were you hoping to achieve with that?
Dwin: Quite simply, I wanted you to forget GKW before you heard GKW (reprise). To put it that close together would be too jarring with the switch in tempo. The experience I wanted to create was that you’d start off big then get into the middle and then you feel gkw reprise as a song. It was meant to be like slowly let you down at the end of a journey.
Zia: Whose idea was it to make GKW that short?
Dwin: It’s not that short, it’s longer than some of my previous songs. It’s so you can play it over again.
Zia: Haha, funny. As a musician, which songs are already written that you wish you had written?
Dwin: It’s funny because I have a playlist of songs like these. The number one is ‘Jealous’ by Labrinth. Close second would be ‘Hallelujah’, there are a lot of versions of that song but the one in my playlist is the Pentatonix version because I really like that. Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t let me be misunderstood’, my favourite line is “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, don’t let me be misunderstood.”
Zia: After this, what’s next for Dwin, the Stoic?
Dwin: I’m thinking of doing visuals but the key thing I’m keen on dropping here is my joint EP with Rhaffy. Everything that we’ve said ‘let’s try a new sound with this’, it’s going on that EP. So, ‘Streets’ is on that EP, and the snippet of a French song that I posted is on there. Hopefully, this year, if you guys stream GKW and Winning Bread enough and we can get funding behind it.
Zia: As an artist, can you see the playlists people put your playlist on?
Dwin: On Spotify yes. There was one that someone made for his lover and it was just her name and I think it was ‘Go With Me’ there and it just made me feel nice.
Zia: Is that your favourite playlist that you’ve seen your song on?
Dwin: Not necessarily, that one just came to mind immediately because it felt almost intrusive that I could see it – it was between this person and their lover and it felt like I was barging in on something personal.
Zia: That’s so cute. What’s the most out-of-pocket playlist you’ve seen your song on?
Dwin: There was one where I think the person was German because the title of the playlist was in German, it meant ‘Morning Coffee’. It really wasn’t something I was expecting to see my song on so I just let it play and it was actually really nice.
Zia: I shall be putting my playlists on private now. Do you have anything to say to The Stoics?
Dwin: I’d like to say that over time, I have grown with music and I love that the fans have been along with me on this. I just want to let them know that there’s a ton of new music coming and I need their support, if there’s a show; come through, if there’s new music; stream and share with your friends, good things are coming.
Zia: Do you have a date for Speaking of Love?
Dwin: I don’t have a date for it, but I just want people to know that it’s 11 songs as of now. It was 9 at some point but things happen. I’m just excited for people to hear it and listen to it and feel the songs I have on there.
