Concert for deceased student to raise funds

By Maria Miranda
The Collegian

To photographer and musician Joel Pickford, music was the means of helping the family of Shee Yang, the Fresno State student who died in a fire only months before graduating.

Pickford, a Fresno State photography professor, decided a benefit concert was the best way to assist the Yang family. The Yangs lost all their belongings and three family members in the March 19 fire that left their mobile home in ashes.

The concert had two primary objectives.

“The goal is to raise money for the Yang family and to bring the community together through diverse music,” Pickford said.

The concert was scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. and actually began around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday at the Full Circle Brewing Co., and featured bands from varied musical backgrounds.

Rock and pop band Blake Jones Trike Shop were to attend as well as the jazz band Lisa Kao’s Big Night Out. Oceans Front, a Hmong rock and pop band was in the lineup and Pickford’s own blues band JP and the Hellhounds rounded out the eclectic concert.

“I purposefully chose diverse bands,” said Pickford, who hoped to raise $3,000 from the concert, a large jar was available for dontations. “I basically chose four different bands that have different followings.”

Pickford added that he hoped the various musical selections would bring people from all sectors of Fresno together to assist in helping the Yang family.

Lisa Kao, an environmental quality manager at Fresno State and a jazz musician who was scheduled to participate, felt the concert was a way to introduce people to new music and the Hmong culture.

“I think it is a wonderful thing,” Kao said. “In Fresno there are so many different types of music and this is a sample of what’s out there.”

Blake Jones, a rock and pop musician who played at the concert, said it was a worthwhile cause that he was proud to be a part of.

“The Fresno art community has a history of banding together when something needs to get done,” Blake said. “It’s an honor and a joy to be involved.”

For Pickford, hosting the concert was the only possible course of action after seeing the destruction done to the Yangs’ mobile home.

“The first thing I saw was the trailer,” Pickford said. “It was a pretty shocking thing. You could see how the flames engulfed and consumed it.”

Then Pickford said he saw high school and college students begin to show up with candles and he knew he had to document the tragedy.

Documentation is important to Pickford because he manages two photography grants from the nonprofit organizations California Council for the Humanities and the Irving Schools Foundation. These grants are targeted specifically at recording Hmong culture in Fresno.

“Anything that is significant in the Hmong community I’m interested in,” Pickford said. “Documentation is part of my job.”

But in photographing the Yang family, Pickford found a kind and supporting family who welcomed him at the funeral as well as at their Easter celebration. Pickford decided that merely taking pictures of the family wasn’t enough.

“It was at this point when I realized that for the media the story will come and go,” Pickford said. “But for the family it’s ongoing.”

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