Music enhances participation in emerging democracies where the rights of association, assemblage, and and the freedom of expression are suppressed by the state apparatus meant to guarantee them in the first place. Ugandan Afropop musician and politician, Robert Kyagulanya (aka Bobi Wine), composed the song “Tugambire ku Jennifer” (Tell Jennifer on Our Behalf), which articulated the social aspirations of Kampala’s street vendors. The song’s meaning does not begin and end with the composer’s intent but stretches to its effects on the listeners. Analyzing meaning through the lens of speech act theory provides an understanding of what music means when it simultaneously reflects and shapes society.

This article considers the interface between orality and textuality in the Aramaic incantation bowls, as well as the use of performative utterances in the texts of their spells. It demonstrates that writing and writtenness were central to bowl praxis as a whole, and argues that the bowls reflect a growing understanding of writing as performative in itself. In light of this, it suggests that the use of illocutionary acts in the bowl texts reflects the (gradual and ongoing) transfer of performativity from speech to writing in Sasanian Mesopotamia. Such acts of “word magic” in the bowls as oaths and curses are more likely to represent transitional language or a kind of “oral residue” than the verbatim representation of speech or spoken acts.