Canadian wins Air Guitar World Championships 2024
This year I had to attend via virtual world this event where the best airguitarists of several nations gathered to compete for the title World Champion, and for the 27th time: The Air Guitar World Championships took place from August 21-23, 2024, in Oulu, Finland. The motto was once again “Make Air Not War”, because the purpose of the event is to promote world peace. According to the competition ideology, wars will end, climate change will stop and all bad things will vanish when all the people in the world play the air guitar.
On August 22, the Dark Horses Qualication event decided on the last spots for the finals in the centre of Oulu, which this year werde 9 instead of 8, because 2 contestants had equal points. The evening was full of life, colours and energy with a big & cheerful audience, despite the rainy weather which provided an extra challenge for some of the contestants and the maintenance/tech crew alike.
Air Guitar World Champion 2024 is Zachary “Ichabod Fame” Knowles from Canada, winning – besides the title – a precious hand-made Flying Finn guitar, created by Matti Nevalainen and painted by „Nordic Thunder“ Justin Howard, the best air guitarist of all times. This was Ichabod Fame’s first world championship. The two Vice Champions (due to equal points) are the multiple AGWC winners Nanami “Seven Seas” Nagura from Japan and Kirill “Guitarantula” Blumenkrants from France. The record holder “Seven Seas” will probably remain unchallenged for quite some time, because she won the title three times!
This year the audience could vote for their favourite after the first round of the competition, and this year Mathilde “Clitoriff” Dollat from France received this award plus an inflatable guitar.
There were 16 finalists in total, including Thursday’s Dark Horses and the National Champions. The competition was separated in two rounds, with 8 competitors making it to the second round. Just like at ice scating competitions, an expert jury decided on the points (max. 6.0) for a freestyle 1-minute program and for another 1-minute compulsive round to be performed to a piece of music the contestants haven’t heard beforehand.
Quite a remarkable show program entertained the audience while results were calculated: The headbanging performers of “Hairforce” and the air guitarists ensemble “Mastairclass” featuring Apolline “Lady Attila” Andreys, Frederic “French Kiss” Reau, Vincent “Lord Scrat” Roussel, Kirill “Guitarantula” Blumenkrants (all from France) and Corentin “Airgus” Fermont (Belgium). The Final was hosted by Justin “Nordic Thunder” Howard, Asta Salomaa and Julian Owusu.
As (moving) images can express more than words ever could in this case, I’d recommend to watch the live stream recordings of both events, which are still accessible for free from all over the world HERE. (Dark Horse competition begins about 15min into the clip).
The results in more detail:
World Champion: Zachary “Ichabod Fame” Knowles, Canada, 35,1 points
Vice Champions: Nanami “Seven Seas” Nagura (Japan) and Kirill “Guitarantula” Blumenkrants (France), both 34,6 points
Patrick Culek, Ehrwolf, Germany, 34,1 points
Cole Lindbergh, Slappy Nutz, USA, 33,6 points
Mathilde Dollat, Clitoriff, France, 33,2 points
Bryan Antoine, Dirty Beaujolais, Belgium, 33,1 points
Heidi Toivio, Pink Passion, Finland, 32,9 points
Round 1:
Aapo Rautio, The Angus, Finland
Nicole Sevcik, The Muse, USA
Frederic Reau, French Kiss, France, alle drei 16,5 points
Del-Kun Dave Chen, Iron Age, Taiwan
Vincent Roussel, Lord Scrat, France, beide 16,4 points
Lloyd Weema, Stonehenge, France, 15,4 points
Kurt Brown, Shred Lasso, Finland/USA, 15,3 points
Philip Ryan, The Blarney Banger, Ireland, 15,2 points
Start photo: Roosa-Maria Kauppila/Oulu August Festivals
And it’s been 20 years ago that STALKER – back then still a print magazine – had published the first report about this event, check our archive treasures here (click on image to enjoy in full size via Flickr):
