Dwin, The Stoic is What Happens When Poetry Meets Music

Edwin Madu or Dwin The Stoic as he is known to listeners, began his music career intending to gain attention from artists and be a songwriter on the side, but now he has created his own thriving space within Nigeria’s music industry. His Happy Song, one of the many wonders of the evocative Heavy Heart EP, is a peculiar work of art. Despite its upbeat tune, the song conveys sober messages of grief, sadness, and loss. 

Perhaps this uniqueness and peculiarity, commonly present in Dwin’s songs, mirrors his style. Drawing from different genres and styles, like Nigerian Alte, Afropop, Nigerian R&B and Afrobeats, Dwin has not only managed to carve a niche but also a name for himself amongst listeners. He attributes his inspiration to the different genres in the pool of music he had the opportunity to consume over the years, from notable Highlife singers like Oletto to old golds like James Reeves, all encountered through his DJ dad. He also includes his picks from Fuji, Reggae, Hip-hop, and Rap. With a background of writing poetry and prose, as well as a passion for reading, Dwin, The Stoic’s artistry is what happens when poetry meets music.

 In this interview with Culture Custodian, the velvety-voiced singer talks about his many talents, what music means to him and how the title of his upcoming album came about. 

Your music is unique. You’ve carved a niche for yourself. Can you give me a background on your influences?

This is always an interesting question because the influences are very many and diverse. That’s one thing that I have been mindful of. I’ve never said that was one particular genre. Growing up I listened to different kinds of music, my dad used to DJ at some point in university so he had a bunch of records. And so, I soaked all of these up. Even in the current industry, by working with the new sounds, and the new artists who are emerging, and having a chance to interact with people this way as a curator and music exec. So back to your question, it is mostly for how wide I reach when it comes to consuming music and art in general. I listen to fuji and reggae, I love rap a lot. Pop, hip hop, even the history of hip hop and how it came to be. Of course, my history with writing poetry, prose, short stories etc. Those are some of the things people will see because I always want to give people an experience with each song.

There’s a line in The Lonely that says you’d “rather be left all alone than be threatened in somebody’s home… rather not become a star, etc.” Would you say that a part of you enjoys this independence of doing your own thing, thus informing the decision to start a label?

That’s a very interesting question because I was talking to someone about this recently about why it felt necessary to do the label. Essentially what we’re trying to create here is something that will launch more artists. 

For example, this year, Rhaffy will be putting out his solo project, and the Ignis Brothers will likely make a return. So I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it—it was a tough thing to come to. Because it started with me just wanting to make music so that other people would hire me as a songwriter. I had a job; I was working in tech. I was fine building a career there and just being a songwriter on the side, and I put out the first album Heavy Hearts. Somehow, it cascaded into me being an artist on the side. 

It’s not like I was against the establishment. I believe that you can have a good relationship with the label. I believe that the industry can work. When I have interviews, I want to encourage artists or execs who have the Nigerian music industry in mind and want it to grow. We should try and strengthen our indie labels. Let us have structure, let us have an industry where people don’t have to become A-list to have a steady income, right? An industry where all of us are very aware of our limitations means that we start to ask ourselves questions like, why do we have 36 states and you can’t tour in Nigeria, right?

And so for us, it was creating this, we at St. Claire intentionally talk about our work and how we want to be undeniable. We want to just do this in such a way that the music is good. You’re sure of that. And we’re going to make sure we’re giving our best in everything from visuals to how we’re relating with our industry, how we’re building the industry. 

How did you feel the very first time you climbed a stage and how do you feel now? In your answer, I’d like to know about how it was opening for Fireboy in 2022.

I like that you chose that starting point. It’s a good enough contrast. So I would say between the show in early 2022 and doing over 13 plus shows last year including my Christmas shows—for one—I’m a lot more comfortable on stage. 

So I would say that the contrast now is that in Fireboy’s show, I was nervous. When I did that show I didn’t have a lot of pop-sounding songs. I think that day I performed Go With Me and Ifunanya. And before we had gotten on stage, one of the strings of my guitarist’s guitar had cut, so I was a bit nervous, but we went on there and it was nice to then still see the reaction to the song by itself. 

Now, things are also very different in terms of the sound and how I’ve been able to do new things with the music and with the live performance. I’m working with a team now. So, it’s a lot more put together and I have much more confidence. So beyond just the performance itself, just everything else around it where you feel like everything else is sort of sorted. So I’m looking forward to doing more shows this year, especially to help the album.

Is there any artist, local or international, that you’d like to work with soon?

Labyrinth is someone I want to work with. Also, Sam Smith and Asa. These are people whose songwriting I adore. And so I want to write for them, write with them or whatever it is.

I know a new album is coming, but it was a pleasant surprise for me to hear that Ignis Brothers and Rhaffy are coming up with something. I’d like to hear about your new album.

This is the first interview where I get to talk about it in some detail, not too positive just yet because we don’t have a date yet, but I can tell you what the album is about.

This album is different and important for me as an artist because the last time I dropped an album was in 2018. Heavy Hearts was supposed to be a songwriter’s resume. It was me saying I have all these songs, I didn’t want to be an artist. I was fine with that album going out for a couple of musicians to reach out to me to write for them (they did) and that would have been my life.

But the album didn’t do that. The album instead made me an artist; it made people want to listen to me and I was mindful of that.

Now, this album wasn’t supposed to be my second album. I had an album planned and then we wanted to make it a very big experience, which means there’s a lot more work that needs to be done for it to be where it needs to be. So we said we’ll move it. 

But we’re gathering songs. Some songs like To You had dropped and they were part of this theme. And so we said, you know what, we could make an album and decided on the name Master of Ballads because there was a 2019 interview I had done with Emmanuel Esomnofu. He’s a writer. He had written a piece for Filter Free about me. And then the title when he had published it was Meet Dwin, The Stoic, the emerging Master of Ballads. And I quite liked the title. I also really like it because it did something for me in terms of answering the genre question because a ballad is not necessarily a genre. It’s more a writing style, it’s more a songwriting style. It’s an album that’s been morphing so far and slowly morphed into what is loosely a concept album where it’s the story of a character; “The Master of Ballads.” It’s not necessarily autobiographical, most of it is fictional. I feel like it ties together the project, in the way that the first and last songs all kind of introduce you and take you out of the story. I am excited about it and I can’t wait for you to hear it. Trust me.

Can you tell us about a specific song that holds personal significance to you, either as a love song or a heartbreak song, and the story behind its creation?

The interesting thing is personal can mean different things. But if you mean the stories behind them being from my own life, I am trying to think. To be fair, a lot of Heavy Heart was from a very honest and vulnerable place so I think a lot of those songs had elements of me in them. 

I say songs like The Lonely. 3rty and I started the song, 3rty and I went  to the same secondary school. He was a year ahead of me and then we ended up in the same university, while we were there we wrote the song.  At the time, I was in a relationship where it was towards the end of it, and I wanted to write a song about that feeling of when a person is both there and not there. Where it just requires that one of you tells the truth to likely wrap up.  So that feeling of trying to capture that was interesting. The simplest way to explain it is that I don’t like trouble, I would like to not just be a problem, I would rather shrink, I would rather go into the darkness than have to deal with any of these issues like being lonely. 

Happy Song is another song that’s very personal because in it, I sort of deal with grief but try to create a song that doesn’t sound sad per se because I had lost my sister who St. Claire is named after. Her middle name was Claire. The video tells a different story but the song itself, when I had written it in 2017 in Accra, it was about dealing with grief. The chorus is just questions. “Where are you, are you going? and then it’s hard to do these things alone.” So it’s supposed to be a song I use to deal with grief. 

The truth of it is that you’re hardly ever able to draw a straight line. “Oh, this part is fictional, this part is autobiographical” but, because again, it’s an art, and for me to continue doing this for a living I need to be able to not just draw two very straight lines to them so I just allow. I don’t focus on what necessarily caused the song to be anymore at least. These days I just take the songs as they come and try to write the best ones.

Which current Nigerian song do you wish you had written or sung?

Current Nigerian song I wish I had written, I will just probably pick something that I have been playing a lot lately. It will likely be Young Jonn’s Xtra Cool. I love that song. It’s not just about the writing. It’s the composing as well. All of it comes together to make a very good song 

You know when people say a person’s music saved their lives, whose song can you say has saved your life?

Changed my life, I would say Labrinth’s Jealous, Emeli Sande’s River, Nina Simone’s Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood. I have a list of songs I wish I had written, and it’s on there. 

I know there are many faces to Edwin Madu. You spoke about writing more, I’d like to probe. What should we expect?

I need to answer this very carefully because I don’t want anybody to come and chase me for anything. But I would like to be sending my newsletters more, monthly. I am looking to send out the first edition of the year before the end of the week. I want to work on short films or short visual projects. Filmmaking is something I have always wanted to do and it’s why I took a stab at it by directing the video for Without Your Love, I am hoping to do some more of that and of course what that comes with is a lot more writing. I want to write scripts and probably dust off some of my old short stories and publish them. I will be very honest and say the music executive part of my life is taking almost all of my time but I am trying to be conscious of creating time for it while creating music and performing music and while doing all that, I want to sometimes just write and I hope I get more time to do it honestly but yeah, more writing will come out in some form.