In a sweaty, dark clubhouse in northern Finland last weekend people were jumping around, contorting their bodies and faces, and screaming into the early hours of the morning while moving their fingers through the air in intricate patterns with pinpoint precision.
To the sound of thumping rock music, they were battling it out for a spot in the final of a competition now in its 20th year: the Air Guitar World Championships.
What started off as a bit of a joke has turned into an annual fest of crazy mime artists who compete for the title of Air Guitar World Champion in the city of Oulu, a high-tech hub on the Baltic Sea surrounded by forests.
In 1996, there were eight competitors, with one foreign champion, from neighbouring Sweden. This year, a record 30 so-called “dark horses” from a dozen countries competed in the all-night semi-final to win one of nine places in the grand final, where they joined seven national champions from as far afield as the United States, Japan and Canada, and reigning world champion, Nanami “Seven Seas” Nagura, from Japan, who won the world title last year at the age of 18.
Only six-tenths of a point separated the nine hopefuls who qualified for the grand final.
Beth “CindAirella” Melin from the US impressed the packed crowd with air punches and kicks. Her performance secured fourth place in the qualification round, behind two compatriots and Russia’s Kereel “Your Daddy” Blumenkrants.
The 2002 champion, Zac Munro from London, ripped off his shirt to whistles and whoops from female fans as he wrapped a solo that earned him the seventh spot.
The final was held the following night on an outdoor stage in a city square.
One of the judges, Aline Westphal from Germany, said she was looking for precision.
“It’s important that the contestants are very precise on the instrument and their facial expressions, too,” she said. “You just feel it when ‘airness’ is there.”
All eyes were on Matt “Airistotle” Burns from Staten Island, New York, a three-time title holder in the US. The country is the “powerhouse of air”, with dozens of air-guitar competitions held every year and some competitors able to earn a living from it.
They include the official "Air host" of the world championships, Dan Crane, who lives in Los Angeles. Author of To Air Is Human: One Man's Quest to Become the World's Greatest Air Guitarist, Crane has never been world champion, but finished second twice. No longer competing, he decided to remain active in the rarefied "air world", and has hosted the world championships since 2008.
“The absurdity required to hold this event in this small city in northern Finland is equally proportionate to the absurdity of playing an invisible guitar in front of thousands of people,” Crane said before the final.
In the end, Blumenkrants turned, twisted and slid on his knees to take home to Russia the title of Air Guitar World Champion 2015.
But it was a close call.
After the scores were added up, Blumenkrants was tied with Burns. Even a game of “stone, paper, scissors” ended in a draw, forcing one final showdown.
“Your Daddy” won with a wild but controlled thrashing-arm performance in a shiny spaceman rocker’s suit that he augmented during the last section of the show by wearing woollen gloves with flashing fingertips.
“It was the gloves that clinched it,” said Munro. “But both those guys were amazing. They knew the music note-for-note.”
Last year’s champion, Nagura, finished fourth after slipping on the stage, which had to be mopped up between the one-minute performances as relentless rain continued through the night.
artslife@thenational.ae
