It is characterized by lyrically dense, sprawling songs and musical backing by several jazz-oriented instrumentalists, most prominently fretless bass player Jaco Pastorius, guitarist Larry Carlton, and drummer John Guerin.

On her way back home, Mitchell met with the Tibetan Buddhist master Chogyam Trungpa in Colorado,[3] an event she credited with curing her cocaine addiction and leaving her in a selfless "awakened state" that lasted three days.

[4] During some of her solo journeys, Mitchell donned a red wig and sunglasses, and told the various strangers she met that her name was either "Charlene Latimer" or "Joan Black".

[3][6] During the recording of her albums Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Mitchell had grown increasingly frustrated by the rock session musicians who had been hired to perform her music.

In addition, her relationship with the drummer John Guerin, which lasted through a significant portion of the mid-1970s, influenced her decision to move more towards experimental jazz music and further away from her folk and pop roots.

[8] Dominated by Mitchell's guitar and Pastorius's fretless bass, the album drew on a range of influences but was more cohesive and accessible than some of her later, more jazz-oriented work.

[citation needed] "Coyote", "Amelia", and "Hejira" became concert staples, especially after being featured on the live album Shadows and Light, alongside "Furry Sings the Blues" and "Black Crow".

[citation needed] The album title is an unusual transliteration of the Arabic word more commonly rendered as Hijrah or Hegira, which means "departure" or "exodus", usually referring to the migration of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his companions from Mecca to Medina in 622.

[10] The portrait of Mitchell on the front cover was taken by Norman Seeff and the other photographs were taken by Joel Bernstein at Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, after an ice storm.

"A Strange Boy" recounts the affair Mitchell had with one of the men she was traveling with from Los Angeles to Maine, a flight attendant in his thirties who lived with his parents.

The song refers to places Mitchell went during her trip to New York City, including scenes at the Mandolin Brothers guitar store in Staten Island and a visit to a fortune teller on Bleecker Street.

[4] The song also mentions the blowout fight and abandoned midwestern tour that marked the end of Mitchell's relationship with Guerin: "I left my man at a North Dakota junction, and I came out to the Big Apple here to face the dream's malfunction."

According to Mitchell's biographer Sheila Weller, "Song For Sharon" also makes a coded reference to the March 1976 suicide of Jackson Browne's wife, the fashion model Phyllis Major.

"[3] "Refuge of the Roads" was written about a three-day visit that Mitchell had made to the controversial Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa in Colorado on her way back to Los Angeles.

Despite reaching number 13 on the Billboard 200 pop album chart and attaining a RIAA gold certification, it did not garner significant radio airplay.

[30] In his five star review for Sounds Magazine, British music journalist Tim Lott wrote: "On a commercial level, this is manifestly the most non-instant album she has ever produced.

[40] British rock critic Nick Kent wrote in the New Musical Express that Hejira is Mitchell's "soul-to-soul statement circa 1976", and "her melodies are inevitably both utterly relaxing and stimulating, and the Pastorius/Carlton duo are just stunning in these spartan settings".

[41] In a 2022 review for Pitchfork, Jenn Pelly described the album as "restless music of road and sky [in which] narratives unfurl with driving forward motion", adding that "the fretless bass, spare percussion, and unusual harmonics depict [Mitchell's] wintry lucidity.