Hamilton man wins world air guitar contest in Finland

A Hamilton man has been crowned winner of the 2024 Air Guitar World Championships and has Canadian band Nickelback to thank.

Zachary Knowles, 34, claimed the prize on August 23 at a festival in the city of Oulu, in central Finland.

Also known as ‘Ichabod Fame,’ Knowles worked his magic, strumming along to Nickelback’s song ‘Photograph’ while decked out in a bespeckled outfit complete with white visor.

Contestants are judged on originality, stage presence, artistic impression and technical merit.

The organizers of the competition, whose hashtag is #MakeAirNotWar, say that the purpose is to “promote world peace.”

“According to the ideology of the competition, wars would end, climate change [would] stop and all bad things [would] disappear, if all the people in the world played the air guitar,” the Air Guitar World Championships website reported.

It was Knowles’ first world championship in the event.