SIGN OF THE TIMES
FROM JUNE/JULY 2021 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX
After years at the helm of the art collective 88 Days of Fortune, Witch Prophet is heading up the label Heart Lake Records.
Musical multi-hyphenate and label head Witch Prophet makes space for artists the Toronto music industry overlooks
The musician Ayo Leilani, also known as Witch Prophet, has spent the better part of the past decade helping other musicians get their music heard. As the founder of 88 Days of Fortune, a talent incubator and indie label wrapped into one, she represented more than 20 artists, ran a monthly showcase and released compilation albums featuring genre-spanning musicians like rappers Spek Won and Keita Juma, as well as rock band The OBGMs, and visual work from photographers Yannick Anton and Jah Grey. Each artist is emblematic of a particular timestamp in Toronto’s creative scene: post-Drake, pre-pandemic, in the height of the Afro-punk era and the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement. It was “if you know, you know” without feeling exclusive.
“We weren’t the first, but we were sort of like a stepping stone for people to recognize this space that reflects what’s happening in Toronto outside of the everyday scene,” Leilani explains. “Like what’s happening in the queer scene, what’s happening in the downtown scene, and how are they fusing into one.”
With inclusivity at its core, 88 Days of Fortune sought to create safe spaces for women and queer folks – a feat that Leilani takes pride in. “It’s only in hindsight that people actually recognize what everybody who was involved with 88 Days did in terms of creating the culture, creating the scene, and changing the vibe of downtown Toronto,” she explains. “We showed the wide range of musical styles that Black people can like. Even just throwing hip-hop parties that felt safer, because we weren’t playing homophobic songs or other music that would make people feel unsafe.”
But this soon became unsustainable. Five years in, the group hit a wall. She attributes the unravelling, in part, to exhaustion. “There was a lot of burnout,” she says. “Supporting the community is fantastic, but if it’s not reciprocated or if it’s just one or two people doing a lot of the work, people can feel resentment.”
But the most glaring factor that threatened 88 Days’ viability was funding. Five years into running the collective, they still hadn’t turned a profit. “We had been throwing events and putting on showcases for five years [almost] completely out of pocket – no grants, nothing. Definitely not making any money back at the end of the shows.” (She says the Toronto Arts Council awarded the group a $2,000 grant for their second anniversary, and they won $5,000 in a pitch contest for ArtReach in their third year.) In the end, she says, they decided that it was “great for what it was, but it needed to grow.” By 2016, 88 Days had disbanded, and Leilani had left the city for Caledon.
The day we spoke over Google Meet, she told me about her next-door neighbours there, honey farmers who use their front porch as a storefront and don’t lock their door. “It’s a different vibe out here,” she says. Yet a scene is once again forming around her.
After pausing for a year, the collective has re-emerged as a full-fledged label, named Heart Lake Records after a street in the neighbourhood that Leilani now calls home. Her partner, Sun Sun, their band, Above Top Secret, and rapper Yassy are currently on the roster.
It’s a new endeavour, but some of the same problems have reared their heads.
“In conversations with labels here, they would all say that they love Witch Prophet and love everything that I’m doing, but they don’t know how to market me in Canada,” she says. “It’s the infrastructure of Canadian music: They know what’s creative and they know what’s making money, but they don’t know how to make it sustainable or how to help the artists that are out here want to stay here.”
It’s a plight that feels familiar for many Canadian artists, particularly racialized artists: feeling underappreciated and underrepresented in the mainstream market. She says that with 88 Days of Fortune, “In terms of people actually recognizing the value in what we were doing, it wasn’t there. We were too DIY to be taken seriously.” Though they managed to get funding twice, “a lot of times we’d get denied for the grants.”
Independent labels and underground collectives have long been doing the legwork to create platforms and income streams for artists, as Leilani did with 88 Days and now with Heart Lake, but the gatekeeping that holds DIY collectives back from long-term viability is ever-present. And despite the enduring influence of Black creators in the music industry, the cost of pulling up a seat at the table as a Black-owned independent label is steep.
“It’s always weird to see who is creating the culture and who gets to make money off of that creation,” she says. “The sharing of information and resources is what’s going to get the scene further, but it’s also about funding. We need actual money.”
Heart Lake is currently crowdfunding on GoFundMe to expand its artist roster. Even from outside of the city, the label is using its seat at the table to create and distribute resources for Toronto creatives. “It’s really just about recognizing what the artist needs and seeing if we have the capability to provide that. If we do, we’re going to share it,” she says. “That’s the only way that this industry is going to move forward.”