Radical Transformations: Kim Gordon and the Sun Ra Arkestra at SummerStage

by McKenna Roberts

On a sweltering Thursday afternoon in Manhattan, my friends and I mounted our Citi Bikes and headed through Central Park to the infamous SummerStage. Because of my overly ambitious perception of my athletic ability, combined with flocks of runners and cyclists in the park on a perfect summer day, we arrived just after Saluson Malone 1—the experimental project of Jasper Marsalis— exited the stage. I was joined by at least nine other WKCR programmers in the crowd, which can undoubtedly be attributed to our love and admiration for Sun Ra and the maestro, Marshall Allen.

The energy in the crowd was palpable, particularly because there was a collective understanding that we would be bearing witness to a repeating (and rewriting) of history. On July 4, 1992, in this very corner of Central Park, Sun Ra and his Arkestra opened for Sonic Youth, of which Kim Gordon (this evening’s headliner) was a founding member until the band’s disbanding in 2011, following Gordon’s divorce from her co-founder, Thurston Moore. Now, Gordon, an accomplished experimental artist in her own right, was set to take the stage.

transported each of us in the audience into a realm unknown: cosmic and playful, chaos and magic. The shimmering outfits of each member of the Arkestra were mesmerizing in their own right, but watching the group settle into rhythm—and subsequently unearth that rhythm—was nothing short of transcendental. As this was my first time seeing the Arkestra live, I was enamored by the entirety of the production: from the foam hammer being used to strike the keyboard to various members of the Arkestra laying down their instruments to dance, every element of the show was innovative and, stated plainly, cool.

Just after 7 p.m., as the June sun began to set behind the trees, Marshall Allen and the rest of the Sun Ra Arkestra took the stage. They

Once Marshall Allen and the rest of the Sun Ra Arkestra exited the stage (somewhat prematurely), we took a seat on the lawns in anticipation of Kim Gordon and her band. Following the Sun Ra Arkestra’s performance, I was left with a conflicting pair of feelings: in awe of the cosmic legends who carry on Sun Ra’s legacy while continuing to innovate and become anew, and—given Marshall Allen’s recent celebration of his 100th birthday—a melancholic question of whether I would see this same group perform again in my lifetime. The moment felt fleeting; however, the brevity of the performance seemed to represent something Sun Ra himself had mused upon during his earthly lifetime: life’s elements contain such brevity only here on earth. Luckily for listeners like myself, each member of the Sun Ra Arkestra is operating on an intergalactic plane.

Finally, as the sun finally set below the horizon of the bleachers, the effortlessly cool Kim Gordon and her band took the stage. She performed songs solely from her second solo album The Collective, which was released in March of 2024, and as a first-time listener of the record, I was struck by how much of a departure it was from her discography with Sonic Youth. The album can primarily be classified as an experimental trap with industrial influences, but what most entranced me hearing this album live was Gordon’s lyrical prowess. Tackling themes of masculinity and the digital age, Gordon is provocative and blunt. Throughout most of her performance, I felt as though I was at a spoken word poetry reading in a dream state. While, at first, her set appeared to be seemingly disjointed from the celestial Sun Ra Arkestra’s prior performance, the less I attempted to analyze the two in isolation from each other, the more I understood the magic and magnitude of their respective performances.

Though Sonic Youth drew influences from all over the musical spectrum, Thurston Moore stated explicitly that Sun Ra served as a major pillar of inspiration for avant-garde rock in the 1980s and 90s. The legacy of Sun Ra and his Arkestra’s ability to influence free and liberatory musical performance and practice across genres speaks not only to the transcendental quality of Sun Ra’s discography, but also to the dissemination of artistic liberation that Sun Ra and his Arkestra continue to provide and inspire today. As pioneers of Afrofuturism and free jazz, it is no surprise that the Sun Ra Arkestra continues to ignite a rejection of musical tradition and exploitation in the music industry, as well as serving as a reminder of the radical, transformative power of reinvention.

In an article published in the New York Times detailing Gordon’s navigation of a new era of her solo career (one detached from the legacy of Sonic Youth and her ex-husband), the critic Lindsay Zoladz writes that “Gordon has proved in this past decade is that her art, her life, her cool—if she’ll forgive the word—has never been contingent upon anyone else.” For many women in the music industry, their commercial success is seemingly contingent on their ability to become anew, to reinvent themselves time and time again to prevent becoming stale, undesirable, and tired products of an industry that once adored them. For Gordon, however, reinvention represents something more: a shedding of all that she was once previously tied to and, more importantly, of the superficial boundaries of genre and artistry. The Sun Ra Arkestra undoubtedly continues the legacy of boundary-pushing and dissolving, allowing generations of artists to follow suit.

Overall, the Sun Ra Arkestra and Kim Gordon double-header at SummerStage this year was both reminiscent of legacies past and a reminder of the unpredictability of the future. Experiencing both performances in tandem was a testament to the radical nature of liberating artists from the confines of legacy. But the legacy of Sun Ra and his

Arkestra’s influence on the experimental rock and post-punk projects of the 80s and 90s is far from over: while Gordon’s live performance and recent releases exhibit a shedding of her former career, it is clear that she remains influenced by the Sun Ra Arkestra’s fearless pursuit of transformation.

SummerStage at Central Park continues throughout the rest of the summer. For a list of free performances in the series recommended by WKCR for the month of July, check out the July events on page 23.