Haitian Women- Régine Chassagne





Haitian Women



Régine Chassagne is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist musician and singer, and a founding member of the band Arcade Fire. She is married to co-founder Win Butler.

Life and career

Régine Chassagne is a  Haitian-Canadian musician born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and grew up in St-Lambert, a suburb south of Montreal. Her parents emigrated from Haiti during the dictatorship of François Duvalier, which is alluded to in the Arcade Fire song "Haiti", in which she sings, Mes cousins jamais nés hantent les nuits de Duvalier ("My unborn cousins haunt Duvalier's nights").

Chassagne earned a B.A. in communication studies at Concordia University in 1998, and went on to study jazz voice briefly at McGill University. She was singing jazz at an art opening at Concordia in 2000 when Butler met her and persuaded her to join his band; after line-up changes, only the two of them were left. They married in 2003. She plays many instruments on stage, including the accordion, drums, xylophone, hurdy-gurdy, keyboards and organ.

Haitian Women