Wearing different caps as video editor, music producer and jazz musician, Edwin Utere, who is popularly known as Ed Izycs, is largely self-taught. Set to release his maiden album titled, ‘Gold’, in April, Ed spoke to JOE AGBRO JR. about learning his skills via YouTube, producing music and why he thinks people have capacity to do more.
AS Ed Izycs, sporting dreadlocks, prepared for his act during 2018 Felabration in Lagos, the audience inside the Afrika Shrine, Ikeja, venue of the annual festival held in honour of legendary founder of Afrobeat, Fela Kuti, watched in anticipation. His set up, a keyboard and a MacBook, was unusual in that environment. But as he delved into his composition, ears cocked to the instrumentals booming from the speakers. And alternating between his flute and computer, he started creating jazz music that mesmerised the audience.
“For a successful instrumental musician, you need to have like a band, you need to have a drummer, a bass guitar,” Ed said.
“What I do is I create the base music first. After creating that, I know that this is the background music. This is what will play while I’m performing. When that is playing, I play the piano and I play the flute alongside. It gives this surreal feeling, people don’t understand what is going on.
He would later create a more surreal scene when he played two flutes simultaneously.
“It’s a lot of work but I’ve practiced it a lot and I’m in total control of all the sounds,” he said.
“So, you have to find a way to split your head and your fingers to get two different sounds. I mean, it doesn’t come easy but it’s worth it.”
Ed said he was once performing and someone said it was the laptop playing the flutes. So he stopped the performance, played each flute individually, before playing both together. He said the person then clapped and apologised.
“So, people see it as very impossible but the way our brains are, there is a lot of space. If you actually put your mind to do something, you will be able to figure it out. I think that’s how the brain works because it’s so large. You can be video director, you can be an animator, you can be a musician, you can be a chef. It’s how you harness it.”
And harnessing that brainpower is what Ed who celebrated his 29th birthday on March 15, is all about.
Finding Jazz
THE second born in a family of six boys, Ed grew up in Rumukurushi, Port Harcourt, Rivers State. He said his dad loved music a lot and used to perform as a Michael Jackson impressionist when he was younger.
“So, while we grew up, he always made sure there was enough music in the house,” he said of his dad.
“He would buy music instruments and just put them in the house, though we didn’t have passion for them at that time but they were just present.”
His dad’s love for jazz would also ensure Yanni’s music often enveloped the house.
“We’ll wake up listening to Yanni. We’ll go back to bed listening to Yanni and I enjoyed how they make music then. Yanni’s band was wonderful. They had everybody that was exceptional at their instrument.”
Ed says he started taking music seriously when he finished secondary school in 2006. The instruments lying around started appealing to him. And being fascinated by Flutist in Yanni’s band, Ed wanted to play the flute. However, he started learning the piano first before transiting to the flute.
“Basically, I just practiced by myself at home, did a lot of trial and error. And the beautiful thing I discovered was the internet, was YouTube. I learnt almost everything I know today from YouTube. So, the fact is that my dad made that conducive environment for me and that those things were available and the resources, tutorials to learn those things were also available online.”
Ed later got admission to study Mass Communication at the Rivers State Polytechnic but stopped after two years because he was not enjoying it as much as he thought. He took to YouTube to learn video editing, a skill would that would be vital for his career.
All the while, he continued honing his music skills and would perform every Friday at his mum’s restaurant.
“It was not sounding good but I mean, I enjoyed it,” he said of the experience.
“But for the fact that they believed that this is their son doing this, they supported me. And then, over time, I got better and better.”
In fact, it was his parents that helped him secure a pass to play at the Calabar Jazz Festival. The organisers were impressed and asked him to come and perform in subsequent editions.
However, because of the peculiarity of the jazz genre, Ed said it was tough finding a producer who understood him. To go around that, he said he learnt how to produce his own music – from his elder brother, LeriQ, who is a producer and also from YouTube.
“All the things in my head, I could not tell somebody because they would not even understand where I was coming from.”
Gaining online
ED trudged on and in 2014, when he did a video of his first single, ‘Celebration’, and put it on YouTube, his career leapfrogged.
“The video was done with a mobile phone,” Ed said.
But it was enough to capture the attention of Lagos-based Cadilly Entertainment, which signed him on pronto.
“They called me and said they liked what I am doing, come let’s work together. At first, I was doing it just for fun but they said there’s a lot of potential in this. Then I came to Lagos and signed the deal.”
He started doing more songs, more videos and more gigs. He opened for Lauryn Hill when she came to Lagos in 2015.
“After I performed, she was really impressed,” he said.
In 2016, he released an EP, “The SongZ of iZycs” which had nine songs.
And aside Calabar Jazz Festival, where he has performed several times, and other jazz festivals in the country, Ed has also performed in Dubai, South Africa and Uganda, doing collaborations with South African singer Kimberleigh Venty and Ugandan singer Eddie Kenzo. In fact, he spent two months in Uganda and did a video for his song, ‘Zuri’ which means ‘beautiful’ in Swahili, there. On the local scene, he has done songs with Skales and MI.
Cadilly Entertainment, he said, “believes in my music that it will succeed.”
And his maiden album, titled ‘Gold’, which has 13 songs and two bonus songs, is scheduled to be released on April 12 in Lagos. It would also be launched in Port Harcourt and Abuja.
“This is my interpretation of things we have put in,” he said on why he chose ‘Gold’ as the title.
“I feel that they are as valuable as gold. If you listen to the composition I have put together, they’re really befitting for that word ‘gold.’
The album also comes with a video cd and Ed did the videos, album design and art direction.
“Basically, I did everything,” he said.
“There’s an Eddie that does video, there’s an Eddie that does music and there’s an Eddie that produces. I make sure all of them are top quality.”
He has done music videos for artistes such as YQ, DY Humilty, Terry G and NOSA.
Committed to his music, Ed, who is still a bachelor, said he is presently off relationships. However, he enjoys playing video games.
“If I’m not making music or creating something for work, I’m playing video games and watching videos,” he said.
“I have Playstation 4, I have an X-Box, and I have a PC. Video games help me relax a lot.”
But he also finds time to learn. And three years ago, he took to the internet again to study.
“I started learning animation, graphics, design and I got a diploma for that too,” he said.
“The internet is beautiful. If you know how to harness it, it’s an unlimited resource for anything you’re looking for. I learnt how to play the piano from there, how to combine the flutes from there, how to produce from there. Because after you have made the music, you have to shoot the videos for that music. And every video director then was expensive. So, I had to learn how to make videos. So, YouTube was there to also teach me how to make videos. Till today, I still go back to the internet to look at how to make my craft better and it’s a good place to reach out to people too.”
Inspiration
TALKING about his source of inspiration, Ed who is learning to play the violin and guitar said, “whenever I see power, I’m always inspired to create.”
This, he said, stems from growing up in Rumukurushi where electricity was nearly absent.
“All of us in the house, we had so much ideas but we couldn’t expand on them because there was no electricity. So, we always kept it in our head. But whenever light comes, everything you had planned in your head would just start coming out because you have to do so much before they take the light.”
He also said he gets inspired when he listens to the likes of Asa, Darey and Yanni.
“When I listen to their music, it gives me the idea that I’m not the only one.”
And while Ed feels good that some of his fans have compared him to Yanni, he likes to be his own man too.
“I hardly do covers. Everything I create is being composed by me. And I make it sound as original as possible. I’m glad when they refer to me as Yanni but it feels good to understand that this is Ed Izycs.”
The artiste who hails from Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom, has an advice for up and coming artistes.
“If you’re doing stuffs, you should have it at the back of your mind that people are always listening, people are watching, people are seeing what you’re doing. So, don’t stop. There’s a normal saying that ‘practice makes perfect.’ I don’t think that is correct. But I think that it is perfect practice that makes perfect because if you’re practicing wrongly you wold not have the results.”
