Music is important to a lot of people.
Obviously.
Especially soulful music. The "current standard" acoustic and/or electric guitar is popular because it was designed to cover a wide range of tones in the easiest way possible. It still takes a lot of thought and practice, just like any hobby.
I think this is the past where I have the disconnect with the guitar people. I've listened to a
lot of music, and I'll certainly grant that the guitar is a diverse instrument, but it doesn't own a monopoly on this, and there are many other instruments that are more accessible.
I expect it's that special combination of being able to offer the single player a rich chordal accompaniment (many single instruments cannot do that) without taking away their ability to sing (as a wind instrument would). A guitar is a great choice for a one-person music show, because it offers one of the easiest routes for a single person to fill up the musical space.
But if you get into the music theory of it, there are many other great choices as well, and I think we're biased somewhat by thinking of music too often in terms of what a guitar (or a bass) can do. If you're playing with a clarinet, you won't fill up the musical space and you won't be able to sing along, but you'll get even more diversity of sound than you would with a guitar, and you'll be able to be expressive in ways that a guitar can't touch. If you're playing a violin, you still won't be able to fill up the music space, but you'll be able to sing along, perform limited chords, and even create harmony between your voice and the instrument due to their overlapping range. As far as expressiveness goes, I don't know of any instrument more expressive than the violin. If you're playing a piano, you get every advantage that comes with the guitar, plus an extended range.
Yet we don't have clarinet cultures, or violin cultures, or even piano cultures. (There are the communities of those who play these instruments or greatly admire them, but no "cultures" per se.) The guitar enjoys a unique status among all musical instruments, and that's what confuses me.
Because of the wide range and the versatility, creativity is necessary for one to have one's own "sound".
"Sound" is hardly unique to the guitar, and I think that instruments like the oboe and the trombone are considerably harder to unlock creatively than the guitar--and both yield greater rewards than the guitar when played well--yet, again, we don't see oboe or trombone cultures. (The poor oboe seems limited almost entirely to the classical world, despite in my opinion being the most beautiful of all musical instruments. Of course, I am biased on that point.)
But if you're talking about me referring to Les Paul as legendary...
It's true that I did think of this because of your thread, but it wasn't specifically directed against you or him. A very important person in music has passed away, and I completely understand how that touches the multitudes.