“Gateway Experience was me trying to figure out, like, ‘Hey, what’s going on? This feels like something with my brain, something’s happening’… Words are Spells, Thoughts are Magic is ‘No, now you know, and you need to work on healing and figuring out who you want around you, and realizing the goodness that you do have, and also calling out the bullshit that was around and being like, hey, like, I don’t want negative talk.’”

Speaking life into herself is a practice Leilani has been honing for a long time, ever since she became a young mother. “When [my son] was maybe like four or five, realizing that I have to be somebody that he can look towards to know how to act and how to be a human, was really hard. Even though I was very young, even though I found myself in moments of depression, I still tried hard. I think now, in my 40s, as I’m battling a chronic illness, it’s even stronger. Negative energy really does affect you, health-wise, physically, emotionally, spiritually.” Even in the hospital, prior to her brain tumour surgery, Leilani repeated the word “Temesgen” to herself, which is an Amharic saying meaning, “Thank God,” in anticipation of the blessing of her recovery. “Temesgen” also happens to be the title of the second track on the project. Practice makes perfect, but she admits that the album serves as a reminder of when she falls short of that conviction. “I sing about it because I need to remind myself and because I fall into those spaces where I forget.”

Choosing her words carefully goes hand in hand with Leilani’s manifestation practice. A core tenet of that is trusting her intuition. “Quiet the ego, listen to the voice inside, whether that be yourself, your angels, your ancestors, God, or even if it’s none of those things. At the very least, let it be yourself.” This is best done in a clean space. “You know, like that saying, ‘Cleanliness is close to godliness,’ is true. It really is. It’s like cleaning your spirit, cleaning your body, cleaning the space that you’re in.” Leilani doesn’t think words and thoughts are all that it takes to bring about your dreams. “That’s why I say, ‘Do the work.’ You know, words are spells, thoughts are magic, but do the work and you’ll see all your dreams come to reality.”

Another life change prompted by Leilani’s recovery in the last two years was boundary setting. As a queer African and ex-Christian who got pregnant at an early age, Leilani is used to setting boundaries to protect herself and her family, but this latest iteration of her chronic illness required her to re-evaluate everything and put her foot down in an industry where she felt “ostracized” for being sick. “These are the things that I need to be successful and to stay healthy while I’m being successful, these are the type of people that I want around me who I know actually care about me as a person and not me as a product, or me as Witch Prophet… and vice versa.” As she recovered from brain tumour surgery, she slowly began to ask for the accommodations she needed. Finding her voice in this way gave Leilani a new take on her career. “Why would I think that just because of this, [my career] would end?”

Leilani’s relationship with religion and family is nuanced; through her witch practice, she’s been able to find the magic within these otherwise traditional systems. “I still use the things that I learned within the church, but in a different way. I’m just not praying to a white Jesus on a cross, but I still pray. I do believe in something bigger, so there are things that I love about the culture and the connection to faith, and how that allows people to get through hard times. But it’s also very spiritual: burning frankincense, like I said before, singing psalms, the music, that essence of it is still very beautiful across cultures.” Growing up, “all the images and advertisements of Africa were starving children,” so Leilani finds it increasingly important to share more about the diversity and rich cultures she inhabits as an Ethiopian and Eritrean woman. “Who continues the culture if people are not sharing stories and sharing how they grew up, or sharing things that they’ve learned and sending down traditions? It gets lost, it gets erased, and that’s not good for anybody… I don’t want to be that. I want to accept myself and show off these amazing parts of my culture.”

This desire to honour her roots is heard clearly throughout the project. On the first track, “Words are Spells,” Leilani’s aunts can be heard translating a protection prayer that they grew up saying. “It means ‘blessings onto me, but a curse to you if you talk shit about me,’ pretty much. My aunt is kind enough that she didn’t want to say, ‘Hell, like, if you talk shit about me, you’re going to go to hell,’ so my other aunt yells out ‘Hell! You’re going to hell!’” On the record’s fifth song, “Akiste” (the word aunt in Amharic), Leilani’s aunts can also be heard singing a graduation song to her son during a surprise party. “Ethiopian and Eritrean graduation parties are like weddings. It is a huge thing.” The graduation song also included praise to Leilani, the mother, which made her emotional on our call. Speaking to herself, she says, “Look how far I’ve come. I’ve come so far from being a teenager who was really confused about who I was, my culture… to being proud of it, to being a mother, to becoming an independent artist. Maybe I didn’t graduate from school, but I have graduated from from a lot of life’s lessons, and it’s important to have this song of them singing and clapping on this album, and having their voices, because they also championed me at my lowest points.”

Leilani has a lot coming up after the release of this new album, including a performance at the Ottawa Jazz Festival. She hopes this album resonates with listeners in both big and small ways. “I hope people are able to hear the vulnerability and the honesty within these songs and are able to connect it to their own lives. It’s all about understanding and recognizing that what you say and what you think can affect both you and the people around you.”