Paul Gilroy argues that memories of slavery are manifest (through their metaphorical displacement by lyrics of lost love) in current Black music. Lost love itself is thus the key metaphor in Black popular culture’s commentary on the failed promises of ‘modernity.’ Through a set of vignettes inspired by Gilroy, Voices of our Mothers: Transcending Time and Distance shows how song, oral history, dance and improvisation function as archival and living forms of history.