Journal of Popular Music Studies, Volume 24, Issue 3, Pages 357–395 “Rise and Obey the Command”: Performative Fidelity and the Exercise of Phonographic Power Patrick Feaster Indiana University, Bloomington On February 27, 1878, the Society of Telegraph Engineers in London hosted an exhibition of Thomas Edison’s new talking machine. One account of the event reports that “the phonograph (after having been charged by Mr. Spagnoletti) gave the National Anthem with quite a stirring effect; and it was as much a compliment to Mr. Edison, and a tribute to the powers of the instrument, as a mark of loyalty to the Queen, that the audience the while remained standing” (“Notes,” Telegraphic Journal 113). British subjects were expected to stand for performances of the National Anthem, “God Save the Queen,” and the audience had accordingly taken to their feet while Spagnoletti was singing it into the phonograph. What impressed the writer was that they had continued to stand as the phonograph played the song back. The “powers” ascribed to the machine lay in its ability to reproduce the singing of the National Anthem not just as a sequence of sounds, but as an act with social consequences. What was at issue here was not audio fidelity—at least, not directly— but rather what I will call “performative fidelity”: faithfulness to the social force associated with an originary act. I’ve chosen this name to invoke an analogy with John L. Austin’s use of the term “performative” in speech- act theory to distinguish language that changes social reality through being spoken from “constative” language that passively describes reality. In Austin’s scheme, a performative utterance is neither true nor false but can instead be evaluated in terms of its “felicity” or effectiveness—for example, whether the words “I hereby place you under arrest” actually place someone under arrest or not. An utterance’s capacity for affecting social reality in this way can be referred to either as its “illocutionary force,” if defined by the speaker’s intention, or as its “perlocutionary force,” if defined by its consequences, and its felicity is held to depend in turn on its satisfaction of certain conditions: it must follow the conventional form, involve the appropriate persons and circumstances, and be carried out correctly and completely, or else it is “void”; and if it lacks requisite sincerity, then it is “hollow.” Thus, the performative utterance “I hereby place you under arrest” C  2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.