Grateful Shred: Meet The 2024 Air Guitar World Champion
Allow me to introduce you to the 2024 Air Guitar World Champion–Zachary “Ichabod Fame” Knowles. It’s about time someone with that last name did something.
Ichabod Fame went against some tough competition in the 2024 Air Guitar World Championships in Finland, including “Shred Lasso” and “Guitarantula.” However, the Canadian hit the right notes and came out on top.
Who Is The 2024 Air Guitar World Champion?
There’s something about the air guitar that is timelessly hilarious. A good air guitar performance? Funny. A terrible air guitar performance? Still funny! It’s one of those hobbies and skills that anyone can enjoy even if they’re terrible at it–much like golf. Did you know there’s actually an Air Guitar World Championship? This year was the 27th one!
It went down in Oulu, Finland which is roughly 335 miles north of Helsinki. I didn’t know you could go north of Helsinki! It’s probably a cold place but the heat of the air guitars kept everyone warm. In the end, Knowles stood above the competition as the proud champion, per ABC News. In order to win, he had to get past the 2023 Air Guitar World Champion Nanami “Seven Seas” Nagura from Japan (a 3-time winner) and the 2022 champion Kirill “Guitarantula” Blumenkrants from France. Both of them finished in 2nd and 3rd place this year, per ABC News.
I love how they all have awesome nicknames. So, how does it all go down? According to ABC News, competitors are judged on their performance of two songs in two separate rounds that each last 60 seconds. They’ve got to have passion, and they are welcome to bring a real pick with them or do a finger-picking style if they choose. They are even allowed props and costumes but cannot have backup bands or real instruments with them.
Contestants come from all over the world to compete. According to ABC News, the jury judges the performances based on “originality, ability to be taken over by the music, stage presence, technical merit, artistic impression, and airness.” They’re then awarded points on a 4.0 to 6.0 scale. Since breakdancing will no longer be an Olympic Sport, maybe Raygun can try her hand at the Air Guitar? You can check out Ichabod Fame’s winning performance below.
