Born in California and raised in Texas, Win Butler is the frontman of Canadian rock band Arcade Fire. Their debut album, Funeral (2004), was a critical and commercial success, ranking 151st on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. Their third, The Suburbs (2010), won two Brit awards and a Grammy. Butler has been married to bandmate Régine Chassagne since 2003. Last year the band released their fifth studio album Everything Now and are currently touring Europe.

1. Music
Bomba Estéreo

We just did a big tour of Latin America and it’s really gotten me on a kick of how incredible Colombian music is. There’s so many different genres: on the Caribbean coast of Colombia you get a really interesting mix between salsa and Latin rhythm and African rhythm, and also sound system culture reminiscent of things I’ve seen in Jamaica. Bomba Estéreo sound really modern, but drawing on these deep rhythms and folk music idioms and instrumentation. It’s almost like the way LCD Soundsystem draws on New York disco – but for champeta and cumbia [folk music].

2. Book
A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James

This totally blew my mind. The language and the history of Jamaica were just really truthful and hard – it’s a kind of Caribbean writing that’s post-Gabriel García Márquez. The background to it is the politics in Jamaica around the assassination attempt on Bob Marley [in 1976], and you get a sense of the CIA’s involvement in Jamaica, and the games that were going on in the 70s. We spend a lot of time in Haiti [the late mother of Butler’s wife and bandmate, Régine Chassagne, was Haitian] and you become really aware of foreign power and how it navigates in the shadows of these Caribbean and Latin countries.

3. Event
Krewe du Kanaval, New Orleans

New Orleans is a very Caribbean city: after the Haitian revolution at the turn of the 19th century the city’s population doubled with Haitians. A lot of the city’s lifeblood – the beats, the jazz, the brass culture – comes from Creole roots and free slaves. So we started a Mardi Gras crew there and threw a giant street party. We had Congolese artists, Haitian drummers, and a priest who said a prayer about Louis Armstrong and Africa. Our colour scheme is pink and green, with jackets for members. I can’t wait till next year – I’m counting the days.

4. Film
Get Out (Director Jordan Peele, 2017)

I went to Sarah Lawrence college in New York and I’m pretty sure Jordan Peele was there at the same time. We both dropped out, but maybe if I’d met him I wouldn’t have. I thought this should have won the best picture Oscar – it was so fresh and scary and funny. A lot of my favourite films walk this balance between horror and comedy. I think when people who come from comedy make the transition into drama it can be a lot more interesting: Terry Gilliam, the Coen brothers.

5. Movement
March for Our Lives

Last year there was a mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas, and we played the same site a couple of weeks later. It’s horrific that it hasn’t moved the needle at all on gun control, but to have all these kids leading the charge, it’s one of the more hopeful political moments in a while, because it’s been kind of a slog. I think everyone who was working on the first Obama campaign was like: “Hey, I remember this feeling of actual grassroots movement.” We’re going to get this clown out, and then we’ll try to change some things.

6. Dance
Moonshine, Montreal

This is a rave that happens once a month in different venues, started by these Congolese-Canadian kids. I randomly went several years ago, and there were all these people breakdancing – really dancing. It was such a beautiful vibe. In Montreal it’s rare to have a scene that’s anglophone and French and black and white and really mixed. The music is incredible. It’s not really a drug thing – it’s just really awesome, and kind of rare, because a lot of the time these sort of things just end up becoming kind of depressing. This is actually joyful music and people dancing all night.