Tom Prasada-Rao, musician who captured the grief over George Floyd, dies at 66

Mr. Prasada-Rao was diagnosed with salivary gland cancer in 2019. The cancer had spread to his lungs, said his sister, Patty Prasada-Rao, who sometimes performed with him.

Since emerging on the Washington folk scene in the 1980s, Mr. Prasada-Rao has developed an eclectic musical brand with more than 10 solo albums and many collaborations, finding influences in American soul and rhythm and blues, as well as musical traditions that reflect his Indian heritage, such as the sitar.

A tattoo on the inside of his left arm – placed so he could see it while playing the guitar – was “Gitanjali,” or “Song Offerings,” a collection of spiritual poems in Bengali by Nobel Prize-winning composer Rabindranath Tagore.

“The older I get, the less I care about the music business than I probably should,” Prasada-Rao wrote in a biographical essay. “Life as poetry is more important to me, and I try to play as if there were no wrong notes.”

Prasada-Rao’s first big break came in 1993 at the Kerrville Folk Festival on a ranch in Kerr County, Texas. In 1991, he released his debut album “Incoming,” which critics compared to folk-rock stars such as Canadian Bruce Cockburn and Briton Richard Thompson. He was still barely known outside of a small fan base.

“I played around a lot in all those hellish performances,” recalls Mr. Prasada-Rao.

At the Kerrville Festival, Prasada-Rao found a powerful ally in Victor Heyman, a Washington-area concert promoter (and former Department of Defense official) who was influential in launching careers in folk music.

Before the Kerrville Contest for Emerging Songwriters, one of the festival’s flagship events, Heyman and his wife printed T-shirts with Mr. Prasada-Rao’s image and then sat front row to show their support during Mr. Prasada-Rao’s performance, which won the top prize.

At the festival he also met the guitarist Michael Lille and singer-songwriter Tom Kimmel, who had written songs for artists such as Johnny Cash and Linda Ronstadt. Mr. Prasada-Rao, Lille and Kimmel formed the Sherpas, who toured over the next three decades and recorded two albums.

Tracks on Honor Among Thieves (2003) include a funk-inspired beat in “Jesus, Chicks and Politics” and Prasada-Rao’s homage to his muse in “Gitanjali,” in which he plays the sitar. (He often wore a long South Asian tunic known as a kurta when performing.)

“Save me from the shackles of doubt/Help me find my way out,” the song begins.

Prasada-Rao increasingly explored themes of spirituality and righteous anger in his music. On a compilation from a songwriting retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, “Follow That Road” (1994), his “Ashes of Love” was dedicated to the late Washington, D.C.-area homeless activist Mitch Snyder. As part of the 2003 album “Out of the Blue,” he added funk beats and harmonies to a cover of Phil Ochs’ anti-war ballad “Is There Anybody Here?”

“Although Prasada-Rao is clearly a romantic, when he sings of love his ballads are reassuringly human rather than sentimental, and when he raises his voice in anger or despair… he makes his point forcefully without resorting to melodrama.” Washington Post reviewer Mike Joyce wrote this in 1994.

“See Myself in You,” written by Kimmel and Mr. Prasada-Rao about an encounter with an enigmatic street figure in Houston, was recorded for an album by country star Randy Travis in 2000. (The song was also performed by Mr. Prasada-Rao and his wife, Cary Cooper, in a duo called “Dreamsicles.”)

“Even though I know nothing about country music, I’m really grateful (for the song),” Mr. Prasada-Rao once told an audience, “because every now and then I get checks in the mail.”

In May 2020, Prasada-Rao watched CNN’s coverage of the riot after Floyd died from brutal restraints by Minneapolis police, which included a knee pressed to his neck for more than eight minutes. Prasada-Rao said he was in a “chemo fog” after recent cancer treatments and felt too exhausted to even get off the couch.

But one aspect of the Floyd tragedy stuck with him: how the incident began with a store clerk’s claim that Floyd tried to buy cigarettes with a possibly counterfeit $20 bill. Prasada-Rao felt a song about him begin to form.

“The lines tumbled out of my head, it felt like an avalanche,” he told Music and Musicians magazine. “All I could do was write them down and try to remember the other lines that came rushing after them. … It was like I’d put my hand in the water and pulled out a fish.”

Mr Prasada-Rao – still weakened by chemotherapy – posted the guitar chords and lyrics online and asked musicians to develop the song further. Hundreds of people played their renditions of “$20 Bill (For George Floyd)”, some giving the song a bitter edge, others turning it into a sad ode. Mr Prasada-Rao later released a version with the band Fox Run Five.

The song, which is still widely played, became one of the defining cultural artifacts of the months of demonstrations and fear following Floyd’s death. (A former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of premeditated murder and other charges; and other former officers were convicted of violating Floyd’s civil rights.)

Some people die for honor

Some people die while singing

Some people die in faith

In the cross on Calvary

And some people die in the blink of an eye

“I just wanted to express my disbelief that this man’s life was taken because of an allegedly counterfeit $20 bill,” Prasada-Rao said. “This whole thing is closely linked to racism and policing issues – and those are really big issues.”

However, he stated that he intentionally avoided the details of the murder to give the song a more timeless quality.

“It doesn’t even say he was a black man killed by white police officers,” he added. “It’s simple. How stupid and ridiculous is that – that this man’s life would be taken because of a $20 bill.”

Thomas William Prasada-Rao Jr. was born on April 11, 1958, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and grew up in Takoma Park, Maryland, after his Indian-born parents brought the family to the United States. His father was an accountant and his mother worked on projects at the World Bank.

Tom sang in the church choir and learned to play the piano and violin as a child. At home, his father played the tabla, a percussion instrument with roots in South Asia. “We always sang little songs in the evening before going to bed,” remembers Mr Prasada-Rao.

He attended Newbold College of Higher Education in England and later spent a year at Spicer Memorial College (now Spicer Adventist University) in Pune, India.

Mr. Prasada-Rao stopped touring in 2007 to focus on studio recording and producing albums for folk artists such as David LaMotte and Rachel Bissex. He also taught courses in songwriting and music at the University of Virginia and elsewhere. He returned to the stage after the release of his album “Adagio” in 2012 with renowned pianist Julie Bonk.

His marriage to Cooper ended in divorce. He leaves behind his mother, two sisters, a brother and two stepdaughters.

Prasada-Rao often found performing in smaller venues and smaller towns more entertaining. He said urban audiences could be “narrow-minded” and less receptive to his music.

“They have the attitude of, ‘Okay, knock me out. Prove something to me,'” he once said while on tour in Kansas. “In small towns, people are more open to pleasure. They find joy in the little things.”