CAMPUS PROGRESS: How One Muslim American Uses Hip-Hop to Heal Wounds

When Cyrus McGoldrick takes the stage, he’s not himself. McGoldrick raps as The Raskol Khan, often with the Freddy Fuego Sextet, an evolving group of musicians based in Harlem. The name Raskol is based on the main character in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. McGoldrick describes the first part of his pseudonym as “a rebellious force in society who’s trying to do the right thing but struggles with his environment and self.” Khan, Arabic for King or Chief, “channels a vestige of an imperial mindset, a long history of conquest,” he says. It is a history McGoldrick hopes to cleanse himself of.