Tom Prasada-Rao, Whose Song Elegized George Floyd, Dies at 66

In late May 2020, Tom Prasada-Rao, a veteran of the contemporary folk scene, was recovering from the “chemo fog,” as he put it, in the aftermath of his cancer treatment when he turned on CNN and saw the protests over the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police.

He was exhausted, but the protests broke his heart, and he felt compelled to write an elegy for Mr. Floyd. He called it “$20 Bill” — a reminder that Mr. Floyd died while being arrested for buying a pack of cigarettes with what might have been a counterfeit 20. It’s a tuneful lament, the gentlest of protest songs, and when Mr. Prasada-Rao recorded himself playing it on Facebook, his soft baritone muted by his illness, “$20 Bill” took off.

He then posted the guitar chords and the lyrics, and more than 100 other musicians, at his request, began recording it. (The original video now has over 40,000 views.) The singer-songwriter Dan Navarro, one of many in the folk community who did so, called it “the song of a lifetime.”

NPR included “$20 Bill” in its list of 50 protest songs that defined 2020, along with Usher’s “I Cry” and Beyoncé’s “Black Parade.” Jake Blount, a musician and ethnomusicologist, wrote that it was easy to imagine the song entering the folk canon.

The song begins:

Some people die for honor
Some people die for love
Some people die while singing
To the heavens above
Some people die believing
In the cross on Calvary’s hill
And some people die in the blink of an eye
For a $20 bill.

Mr. Prasada-Rao — folk music’s “quiet giant,” as Mr. Blount called him — died on June 19 at his home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 66. He was diagnosed with cancer of the salivary gland in 2019, and it had metastasized to his lungs, said his sister Patty Prasada-Rao, who confirmed the death.

Mr. Prasada-Rao was a beloved fixture on the coffeehouse and folk-festival circuits, a musician’s musician known for writing songs that were both poetic and catchy. He was also known for his use of open tunings. Michael Lille, who often performed with him, described how he could make a guitar sound like an entire band.

“He could thump that bass string and keep rhythm with it,” Mr. Lille said in an interview, “while playing these beautiful chord shapes that would support the melody.”

“Tom was the groove master,” said Dalis Allen, a former director of the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, Texas, where Mr. Prasada-Rao performed and taught for three decades. “He had a sense of rhythm and soul and purpose that came out in the music and the guitar work as well as the words that he wrote.”

The festival has drawn stars like Nanci Griffith and Dar Williams along with beginners and folk fans, who often camp together on a 50-acre ranch for nearly three weeks in late spring. “Tom was the grand collaborator,” Ms. Allen said, with anyone who asked, famous or not.

“He never met a stranger,” she said.

Mr. Lille added: “Walking around with Tom at Kerrville was like walking around with Buddha. He was this presence that everyone wanted to be around, and he wore it so gracefully, in a non-ego way, which can be unusual in our line of work.”

Mr. Prasada-Rao was a roly-poly bear of a man who often wore a kurta, the long tunic of his heritage (both his parents were born in India); for years he would introduce himself onstage as “the fat Indian in a dress.” It was an icebreaker, to be sure, but one that spoke to a childhood when he was teased about his size. After a while, said Cary Cooper, his former wife and fellow performer — they played as a duo called the Dreamsicles — he didn’t need the joke anymore.

Reviewing Mr. Prasada-Rao’s album “The Way of the World” in 1994, Mike Joyce of The Washington Post wrote: “Though clearly a romantic, when Prasada-Rao sings of love, his balladry comes across as reassuringly human, rather than sentimental, and when he raises his voice in anger or despair, as on Marvin Gaye’s ‘Inner City Blues’ or his own ‘Nothing Over Me,’ he makes his point forcefully, without resorting to melodrama.

“The way of the real world certainly evokes his concern and outrage,” Mr. Joyce added, “but as ‘Gabriel,’ ‘Till I’m Free’ and other songs attest, so does the way of the spiritual world.”

Thomas William Prasada-Rao Jr. was born on April 11, 1958, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the eldest of four children. His father was an accountant; his mother, Ardys (Williams) Prasada-Rao, was a secretary who later worked for the World Bank.

Tom grew up in Takoma Park, Md., where he sang in church choirs and with his siblings. He was trained on piano and violin, but the guitar became his primary instrument when he picked it up in high school. He attended Newbold College, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Binfield, England, just west of London, for two years and spent another year at Spicer Memorial College, now Spicer Adventist University, in Pune, India, before returning to Maryland.

His career took off in 1993, when he was one of the winners of the Kerrville festival’s New Folk Competition, as were Tom Kimmel and Mr. Lille; the three men formed a band, the Sherpas, and performed and recorded together for the next three decades. One of their songs, “See Myself in You,” written by Mr. Kimmel and Mr. Prasada-Rao, was recorded by Randy Travis. Mr. Prasada-Rao also played in a band called Fox Run Five, with Eric Schwartz, Neale Eckstein, Jagoda and Matt Nakoa.

In addition to his sister Patty, he is survived by his mother; his stepdaughters, Caroline and Hannah Odom, from his marriage in 2006 to Ms. Cooper, which ended in divorce in 2014; another sister, Polly Roberts; and a brother, Dan Prasada-Rao.

Mr. Prasada-Rao knew his time was limited, and over the last few months he invited his large circle of fellow musicians to his home in Maryland to say goodbye. Nearly 100 did, Patty Prasada-Rao said, but some were unable to make the trip. Among those who couldn’t be there was Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, who wrote him an email instead.

“I have always loved your songwriting, your musicianship, your collaborative and humble way of embracing your fellow musicians, fellow songwriters and the grateful souls in the audience that love you and your music,” Mr. Yarrow said.

“You are, and always have been, one hell of a mensch.”