Walk into Normans Music, situated between a barbershop and a nail salon on Wells Street in Eltham, and it is the silence that hits you. That may be surprising considering it is a music shop . But Normans, which claims to one of London’s oldest music shops, doesn’t sell music so much as the instruments that make it.

From 1914, the shop has changed owners many times, each owner bringing “something to the shop,” according to David Williams, the current owner. He notes that he puts more emphasis on repairing instruments than previous owners, and also focuses on the community element.

This last is important to Williams, who believes that a small independent shop like Normans must serve “the needs of the local communities.”

So, what are the needs of the local communities? Well, one is selling the musical instruments that suit their musical tastes.

What is Eltham’s taste in musical instrument at this point of time? “Guitar, guitar!” says Williams, adding that it is the most bought instrument at Normans in recent times.

This probably explains why one display wall – and some other space in the shop –  is covered in guitars. There are some other instruments too, such as keyboards and brass instruments.

But the guitar dominates and Williams says there is a deeper cultural reason it is the shop’s most popular product. “It is the way our music culture has gone since the 20th century when guitar took over the keyboard,” says Williams. “From the 1950’s onwards, what people see in the media is guitarists and so that is what they aspire to be.”

He notes that the electric guitar was popular some 30 years ago but, more recently, it is acoustic guitars.

Why that particular preference for the acoustic guitar now?

Again, it is a response what they see in front of them, as young people, says Williams, because they “see artists like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift (with acoustic guitars)”.

The “obsession” among young people with “becoming a guitarist” dates to the 1950s when rock and roll – which is a fusion of blues and country – was predominant and made popular by bands like the Beatles.

But how did this interest in the guitar embed itself in Eltham? Well, there’s is a unique story that goes back to the 1960s, when young people in the UK – as also the Eltham area – were starting to get acquainted with black American artists and the blues genre they heard on vinyl. Williams says that young people’s curiosity was piqued by the fact that blues came from a culture that was “hidden”. Even in America, it wasn’t mainstream at the time, he says. “We are talking about a time where segregation was happening in America, where black American music would have been ‘underground’,” says Williams. That is why, “guitar is popular now; because of that legacy,” he added.

When asked if for the young people of Eltham at that time, blues was a kind of “expression of freedom” he says “it works on different levels…but one reason young people were attracted to the blues genre (and thus the guitar) was…it was something completely different from what their parents were listening to”. Williams adds, “To young white people it was something extraordinarily exotic”.

He says Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson helped bring the blues to the UK and, by extension, the interest in guitar. “There’s lots of others. They (Waters and Johnson) were early pioneers of blues music.” Johnson, he says, “is important because of the crossroads mythology”.

Williams expands on the crossroads mythology by delving into an intriguing story about Johnson’s life. It became a legend that influenced English artists such as Eric Clapton. Crossroads, the song based on that event, was reworked by the British band Cream in a blues-rock style, making it famous, preserving the legend and inspiring many covers.

Normans Music, says Williams, has a guitar of the same name. “There is a guitar that we sell here called the ‘Crossroads Guitar’ because it is part of the crossroads mythology”.

Even in hard times such as the cost of living crisis, the shop keeps up with the times. Perhaps because Williams himself is a musician who plays with a local band.

“I was fortunate when I was at school in the 70’s,” he says, “that free music lessons were offered to all students, all you had to do is show some enthusiasm and some aptitude.”

His inspiration? Jazz singer, and trumpeter Louise Armstrong.