As an event that’s been around for more than 40 years, the Takoma Park Folk Festival (TPFF) has traditions that have evolved over decades and have become cherished by long-time organizers, performers, and visitors.
Sadly, the Festival also sometimes faces losses, and the 2024 TPFF will honor one of its most talented performers and steadfast supporters: singer-songwriter Tom Prasada-Rao. Known to friends in the folk community as “TPR,” he died in June at age 66, more than five years after being diagnosed with cancer.
“TPR wrote about love, humanity and social action—all the things the Folk Festival embodies,” said Robin Stearn, Festival chair. “We had an immediate reaction on hearing about our loss to rename a stage in his honor.”
The 2024 Festival will be held on Sunday, September 8, starting about 10:40 a.m. with kazoo playing and a sing-along for children. At 11 a.m., music will begin at the Festival’s six stages—running until 6 p.m. with more than 40 performances from a diverse range of Greater D.C. and Baltimore-area musicians. The Festival is free and family-friendly, and includes a crafts show, community tables, food vendors and more.
Stearn says she was smitten the first time she saw Prasada-Rao at a local show. He’d already performed numerous times at the Folk Festival, and Stearn asked for another favor. “I asked if he’d do a fundraiser for us. He didn’t hesitate,” Stearn said.
Performers on the Tom Prasada-Rao Stage (formerly Grassy Nook) were selected because they embody some of TPR’s unique talents, explained Debby St. Charles, chair of the Festival’s Program Committee. “It’s a stage for our more introspective songwriters,” she said. “His lyrics touched you, but he was much more than that. His musicality made him special.”
Among his countless friends is Cheryl Kagan, Maryland State Senator and host of a house concert series for more than 20 years, Folk ‘n Great Music. “He was a great friend,” she said. “TPR played at my first house concert, and he performed at my wedding in 2000. His kindness and authenticity came through in his presence and his music.”
Prasada-Rao primarily performed with an acoustic guitar, but he was equally comfortable with a violin or sitar. “He connected with the head and the heart,” Kagan said, strumming and picking string instruments to create a lush sound that complemented an expressive voice.
Prasada-Rao was a resident of Takoma Park and Silver Spring for much of his life, growing up a member of Takoma Park’s Adventist community. Onstage, he was larger-than-life with a shaved head and goatee, often wearing a white kurta shirt and pants that reflected his roots as the child of Indian parents. “He had a spirituality and a calm, a humanity that radiated out of him,” said Rob Hinkal, co-founder of ilyAIMY, which will be performing at the Folk Festival this year.
“His songwriting was very optimistic, but not in a cliched way,” added David Eisner, founder of the House of Musical Traditions, who booked Prasada-Rao for Institute of Musical Traditions concerts and the Takoma Park Street Festival dozens of times. “His songs had a universal aspect of reflecting something that had happened to you as well.”
St. Charles, a performer and songwriter herself, agreed. “Tom wrote about an experience you’d had but you didn’t have the ability to express,” she said.
Prasada-Rao’s fame as a songwriter soared in 1993 when he was one of the winners of the Kerrville Folk Festival’s New Folk Competition, considered the most prestigious award of its type. He wrote about everything: love, God, current events, life, death. A month before he died, the Fox Run Five (of which he was a member) recorded his last song, “How We Say Goodbye.”
With the Kerrville award, Prasada-Rao was able to build a career as a national musician, and he spent much of the ensuing decades on the road solo or with various music partners. Yet he was just as often found at a Takoma Park open mic or, during Covid years, on the porch of friend and fellow singer-songwriter Annette Wasilik. “It seemed he only became more powerful as his body weakened as his spirit shone all the more brightly,” Wasilik said.
His most famous song is about the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis in May 2020, over allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. The song has been recorded by more than 200 other musicians.
Kagan said Prasada-Rao told her that song came to him nearly in a single moment when he wasa unable to sleep due to cancer treatments. “He just put ‘$20 Bill’ out there, and it went as close to viral as a folk song is going to do,” she said. “It was the middle of Covid. It captured the grief we were all feeling over that senseless murder.”
Hinkal said the song expresses anger, but in Prasada-Rao’s unique way. “It’s a calculated rage,” Hinkal said.
Performers at the Tom Prasada-Rao Stage will each either sing one of his songs or select a song that embodies his spirit. “Tom’s legacy will be with the Folk Festival forever,” said Stearn.