Pictorial & machine age · 1951–1965 · Sub-Saharan Africa

Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism

Also known as Drum, The African Drum, Sophiatown style, The Drum decade

The picture magazine of Black urban Africa in the 1950s. Drum adapted the Life and Picture Post formula to Johannesburg: Jürgen Schadeberg, its photographer and layout artist, and the Black photographers he trained filled it with close, candid black-and-white pictures of jazz, boxing, shebeens, defiance and undercover exposés, behind covers of hand-tinted stars and cover girls framed by a red-box masthead and boxed cover lines. By 1959 it distributed 240,000 copies a month across Africa.

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A distressed vintage-style music poster features a large black-and-white image of a woman singing into a microphone, with smaller photographs of a saxophonist, a smiling couple, and dancers down the left. Oversized cream lettering on red reads “NEW BEAT,” alongside a yellow headline panel and a red footer reading “Music Lives Here.” — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

Use it with care

Drum's photographs show real, named people, among them prisoners, farm labourers and protesters exposed to humiliation or danger under apartheid, and women cast as pin-ups by a magazine owned and edited by men. Many of the photographs are still under copyright in Bailey's African History Archive (BAHA), and the Drum name and masthead are owned by Media24. Borrow the system (candid black-and-white picture features, hand-tinted cover portraits, boxed punchy cover lines), never a particular photograph, the Drum name or masthead, or a real person's likeness. Do not fabricate 'documentary' scenes of real events or of apartheid-era suffering, and never present a generated image as a Drum photograph or a historical record. Photograph or license your own named subjects; in a generated image, show the subject the brief supplies, dressed and posed with dignity, never an anonymous sexualised pin-up or generic 'township' Black people as retro decor. Drum's glamour sat beside full-page skin-lightener advertisements and sponsored beauty contests: do not lighten skin tones in hand-tinting or revive that beauty ideal.

How it works

Let documentary photographs carry the story: shoot close and candid among the people pictured, in black and white, and run them as picture features over several pages.
Give every cover the same furniture: a short title of your own in white condensed capitals out of a red box at top left, and a red band, at the foot or under the title, carrying a slogan in script or swash italic, the month and the price.
Put one star on the cover (a singer, dancer, boxer or cover girl), often a hand-tinted black-and-white photograph cut out against flat red, yellow or blue fields or a drawn ground, and pin boxed cover lines and roundels around the figure that sell the exposé, the scandal and the jazz inside.
Run glamour and investigation in one issue: pin-ups, jazz, boxing, fiction and advice columns beside undercover exposés of farms, prisons and churches by 'Mr Drum'.
Picture Black Africa as urban and modern (sharp suits, dance halls, shebeens and city streets), not the 'tribal' Africa of the first issues.
Write cover lines and captions fast and punchy, in capitals with exclamation marks and page pointers ('see inside', 'p. 19').

Founded in Cape Town in March 1951 as The African Drum, edited by Robert Crisp with Jim Bailey's backing; Bailey took full control later that year, renamed it Drum and moved it to Johannesburg, where it ran through the Sophiatown years, with East and West African editions distributed across Anglophone Africa

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Framed panels defining
Isolated object characteristic
Dynamic asymmetry characteristic
Column grid characteristic
Full bleed occasional
Space & hierarchy: Layered information defining
Sequential narrative characteristic
Single focal point characteristic
Extreme scale contrast occasional
Horror vacui occasional
Typography: Condensed display defining
All caps defining
Grotesque & neo-grotesque characteristic
Script characteristic
Eclectic mixing characteristic
Hand-lettering occasional
Colour: Monochrome characteristic
Primary triad characteristic
Flat fields characteristic
Limited spot colours occasional
Light ground occasional
Form & shape: Naturalistic depiction defining
Rectilinear occasional
Angular & zigzag occasional
Surface & texture: Grain & noise characteristic
Halftone & Ben-Day dots characteristic
Ornament: Restrained accents characteristic
Rules & bars characteristic
Borders & frames occasional
Emblems & badges occasional
Imagery: Straight photography defining
Treated photography characteristic
Photomontage occasional
Comic & cartoon occasional
Medium & production: Offset printing characteristic
Tone & intent: Warm & approachable defining
Rebellious & subversive characteristic
Playful & witty characteristic
Communal & popular characteristic
Luxurious & glamorous occasional
Romantic & sensual occasional
Agitational & persuasive occasional
Avoids: Folk & sacred symbols, Non-representational, Typography only, Generous white space, Rational & objective, Calm & contemplative

Palette

#d42a2f
#f3c934
#151413
#ece5d3
#8c8781
#4f7fb8

Typefaces

Condensed gothic capitals
the masthead, in white out of a red box at top left: THE AFRICAN DRUM in June 1951, DRUM after Bailey renamed it
Swash italic and brush script
the white slogan: 'A Magazine of Africa for Africa' in brush script, June 1951; 'Africa's Leading Magazine' in bold swash italic, 1955–1956, and in joined lowercase script, September 1957
Condensed sans capitals
cover lines in black on white or yellow boxes, or in white on red or black boxes or straight on the photograph: 'Mr. Drum Turned Out of Church' and 'Let the People Drink!', March 1956; 'Reef Girls Forced into Love', June 1957; 'Treason Trial – The Big Story', September 1957

Known for

The African Drum, June 1951
a black-and-white portrait of a boy beside a globe, under the red-box title and over the script slogan 'A Magazine of Africa for Africa'
Henry Nxumalo ('Mr Drum'), 'Bethal Today', an eight-page undercover exposé of farm labour in Bethal with Jürgen Schadeberg's photographs
March 1952
'We Defy'
photographs of the Defiance Campaign printed with Nelson Mandela's statement (August 1952); a 1952 Defiance Campaign issue with an eight-page photographic essay sold a record 65,000 copies
Bob Gosani, secret photographs of the humiliating 'tauza' search dance in the yard of the Fort prison, Johannesburg, shot from the top floor of a nurses' home overlooking it, whose publication in Drum caused a public outcry
Jürgen Schadeberg, Dolly Rathebe photographed for a Drum cover on a Johannesburg mine dump, a shoot that ended with both arrested under the Immorality Act
Drum cover, June 1957
Miriam Makeba at a microphone in a hand-tinted yellow dress before a wall of 78 rpm record sleeves, with the boxed cover line 'Reef Girls Forced into Love' and 'Stars of Jazz' along the foot
Drum cover, September 1957
a hand-tinted cover girl reclining on pink steps, with the boxed cover line 'Treason Trial – The Big Story'
Peter Magubane, photographs of the 1955 ANC convention, his first assignment after joining Drum as a darkroom assistant and driver in 1954

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