Background
information for
"The Core of Ponte"
“The Core of Ponte” was
written in 2008 for a benefit concert for the organization
Broadway
in South Africa.
Songwriters were asked to create songs inspired by the writings and
drawings (which they supplied) of children living in Johannesburg.
It is my experience that this song is performed most effectively when
the history of the building has been explained beforehand.
You can download a
printable
version (7.6 MB) of this page here.
One
of the things that stood out to me in the materials I received was a
drawing of Johannesburg made by an eleven year old girl. She had drawn
a row of buildings, but one was significantly taller than the others,
with the word Voda across the top. I was intrigued by this “Voda
Building,” and so began my research into The Ponte City Tower.
The Ponte building went up in 1975, and at 54 stories, it was (and
still is) the tallest residential building in Africa.
The building is shaped like a cylinder, designed to allow light into
the apartments from the inside, referred to as the core.
The
top three stories host a wraparound, flashing LED sign, a little bit of
Times Square on the Johannesburg skyline. The original sign hawked
Coca-Cola, while the current sign advertises Vodacom, South Africa’s
leading cellular network.
The
Ponte building straddles two neighborhoods, Hillbrow and Berea, which
were designated “white” areas at the time of its opening, when
Apartheid laws were still in effect. Once these laws were repealed, the
neighborhoods around Ponte became heavily populated with blacks and
immigrants, which sent the whites fleeing to the suburbs, Berea and
Hillbrow quickly became the new inner city, with Ponte its most obvious
symbol.
The
building fell into major disrepair, becoming notorious for the garbage
that filled the core, for the high incidence of murders and suicide
jumpers, and for the fact that even the armed guards positioned at the
entrance couldn’t control the crime that had overtaken the building. At
one point, there was even a proposal to convert the building into a
prison. In 20 some-odd years, Ponte had gone from “heaven on earth,” as
the original marketing campaign had boasted, to a literal hellhole.
In
2007, a developer purchased the building for an undisclosed sum and is
spending upwards of 200 million rand to refurbish it as stylish, modern
condos. (200 million Rand is roughly $27 million, which may not sound
like much to us in NY, but it’s a significantly different standard of
living in South Africa.)
In
October of 2007, just before the sales office opened, the New Ponte
developer partnered with the city to sponsor an event to raise
awareness and funds for an inner city arts non-profit organization by
offering the privilege to rappel (or abseil, as they call it) down into
the center of the building on ropes like mountain climbers use.
P.S.
A few months after the concert for which this song was written, the New
Ponte project was cancelled. The development company had never, in
fact, purchased the building, yet had begun renovating floors 1-34
with the understanding that they could buy the building once they had
raised the money, which they intended to do by pre-selling the condos.
Evidently, the upscale buyers they were targeting weren’t biting, and
the developer never got the money to complete the deal. The building is
still partially occupied by original renters, who reportedly share two
painfully slow elevators to take them to their apartments on floors 35
and above....