Air Guitar World Championships - Finland

This post is a part of the A-Z April Challenge 2013

There are lots of people who would give an arm to be the best Guitarist in the world. But ever considered being the best Air Guitarist in the world?

Justin “Nordic Thunder” Howard of USA considered it. And his dream came true. He won the gold medal in the 2012 edition of the Annual Air Guitar World Championships. Yes, you heard it right. There is a world championship for Air Guitarists.

Every year, Oulu, Finland plays host to hoards of hopefuls who fight it out in front of a sellout crowd to be crowned as the ultimate Air Guitarist. This championship was initiated in 1996 as a part of the Oulu Music Video Festival. Since then participants have thronged Oulu from all over the world, to compete among their compatriots in skills of playing Air Guitar. The rationale behind the event as mentioned in their site is to promote World peace. The ideology is that “wars would end and all the bad things would go away if everyone just played air guitar”.  

There are similar regional competitions held in Austria, USA and UK, the winners for which qualify for the world championships. In January, 2013, India and Kazakhstan joined the Air Guitar World Championships (AGWC) network. Prospective air guitarists from these countries will be looking forward to strut their stuff in Finland.

So, how does this Air Guitar Championships work? Well, it’s quite simple. A song, usually with some heavy guitar work in it plays in the background and the participant has to do the best possible impersonation of the actual guitar using his hands.

There AGWC network has now been active for about 15 years and the Championship is in its 18^th year. The network has 20 countries and expanding. This year’s championship is scheduled for 21^st August. Anyone game for it?

An “Oh It can’t be true” Fact regarding Air Guitar: Our very own Sanjay Dutt is an avid Air Guitarist and won gold medal in a similar competition held in New York some 25 years back.