Kings of the Cassettes – The Reuveni Brothers

The “Reuveni Brothers” company began in poverty—ten children in a single room—and became the driving force behind the most significant revolution in Israeli music: the Mizrahi music revolution. In the U.S., Motown empowered Black musicians to break into the mainstream after generations of exclusion. In Israel, the “Reuveni Brothers” carved a path from the Hatikva neighborhood for Mizrahi singers, during a time when they were excluded from the media for being “the others”—different in skin color, heritage, and singing style.

What began in a small room with two double-cassette recorders became, within three years, an industry that generated millions—even in Arab countries. The brothers recognized a massive audience for the music emerging from festive neighbourhood gatherings (haflot), and began recording and distributing it via cassettes at the central bus station. They invented the system. They created their own alternative radio station in the form of cassette stands at the station—this was their way of fighting against radio stations that were closed to their kind of music, which was a blend of Turkish, Greek, and Arabic styles, sung in Hebrew by singers with dark skin.

The “Reuveni Brothers” were the bosses. They stood beside Zohar Argov when he sang The Flower in My Garden and broke through the ghetto wall on television—they produced four records for him. They pushed Shimi Tavori to appear on the popular tv show Od Lahit with the song A Starless Night. They produced Mint for Margalit Tzan’ani, featuring the hit I’ll Still Have. They produced Thanks for Haim Moshe and ten hit albums. They turned Jackie Mekaiten into a star. Their goal was to break market barriers on one hand, and on the other, to satisfy the cultural hunger of Mizrahi communities, whom the state-run radio confined to a musical ghetto of one hour per week. The Reuveni Brothers shattered the ghetto walls with blockbuster hits no one could ignore.

This series goes behind the scenes of the Mizrahi music revolution through the personal story of the Reuveni Brothers, who rose to riches and fell in the whirlwind of the music world. Through their eyes, the series reveals aspects of the Mizrahi music revolution that have never been told. The brothers were present at every twist in the road. In-depth interviews, never-before-heard recordings, and rare archival footage of the greatest Mizrahi musicians are interwoven with the unknown story of the brothers who rose from the gutters to the top.