Blues music has been considered an important and popular music genre in the history of American music. The paper discusses
one of the most important and significant characteristics of blues music - the fact that it illustrates
double conscience, wherein an underlying meaning can be found explicitly or implicitly in the song's lyrics. Examples of themes are the social and personal experiences of the African-Americans in their lives as slaves of the white American society and as laborers in most Southern cotton plantations. The paper examines how the social and personal relevance of blues music to the black Americans is evident in many works of literature depicting black American
slavery such as Frederick Douglass' , "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave." The paper also analyzes three Blues songs to show how the theme of double conscience - "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday, "No Education" by Lightnin' Hopkins, and "Black, Brown, and White" by Big Bill Broonzy.