This weekend’s San Joaquin County Fair will have the usual enticing assortment of carnival rides, arcade games and calorie-laden edible delights, but it’s going to stand out in at least one breakthrough way: a performance showcasing Stockton’s Cambodian American community.
Rapper Khmer1Jivit and singer Ith Sreypin will take the fairgrounds stage Saturday night in a city so proudly ethnically mixed it’s easy to overlook it has one of the nation’s largest Cambodian American populations.
“We wanted to introduce our culture into the fair,” said Daron Ker, a Cambodian American filmmaker who is producing the pair’s fair appearance. He also produced the Cambodia Day Music and Culture Festival last year in San Francisco’s Union Square, which he estimates drew 10,000 attendees.
“Hopefully we can bring more of these shows into the fairgrounds,” Ker said.
Stockton is home to about 9,000 Cambodians, the fifth largest metropolitan concentration in the nation, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center report. The largest Cambodian metro area is in Los Angeles, where Long Beach — which includes a business district known as Cambodia Town — has the highest concentration of Cambodians outside of Phnom Penh, the Southeast Asia nation’s capital. Stockton’s Cambodian population sits behind those in Boston, Seattle and Philadelphia.
While Cambodian Americans have a large presence in Stockton, they often share the challenge faced by other ethnic communities of getting lost in the mix. The fair show, which runs 5:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday, is an opportunity for the community to revel in Cambodian culture — and let others experience it as well.
Ker said he’s especially excited about bringing younger Cambodians in Stockton.
“A lot of Cambodian kids, they know nothing about the culture,” Ker said.
Based in Lexington, North Carolina, Khmer1Jivit raps in the native Khmer language. The artist recently finished a swing through Cambodia that drew big crowds, Ker said.
Khmer1Jivit isn’t the only rapper at the fair. One of the headliners is West Coast hip-hop artist LaRussell.
Sreypin, who established herself as a singer in Cambodia before immigrating to Burnsville, Minnesota, has a traditional style that harkens back to the early 1970s, a golden age of artistry before the Khmer Rouge mass killings destroyed it, Ker said.
“Our intention is to share the beauty of our culture with everyone else,” he said. “We’re hoping everyone will show up and support it.”
Tickets for the concert cost $36.67 and include entrance to the fair.
Based on the concert’s success, Ker is planning to follow up with a Cambodia Day celebration in Stockton at the fairgrounds in September.
Fair gates open at 3 p.m. Friday and noon on Saturday and Sunday. Pre-sale tickets for the midway only, which do not include concerts or rides, cost $11 for adults and $8 for children and seniors and can be purchased online. A wristband for one day of unlimited carnival rides costs $36.
The San Joaquin County Fair runs through midnight Sunday.