BRUCE Cockburn will be performing at The Gate, Cardiff on Saturday, October 17.

For 40 years, Bruce Cockburn has been capturing in song the essence of human experience – while fiercely striving to make it better.

One of Canada’s finest artists, Bruce Cockburn has enjoyed an illustrious career shaped by politics, spirituality, and musical diversity. His remarkable journey has seen him embrace folk, jazz, rock, and worldbeat styles while travelling to such far-flung places as Guatemala, Mali, Mozambique, and Nepal, and writing memorable songs about his ever-expanding world of wonders.

His songs of romance, protest, and spiritual discovery are among the best to have ever emerged from Canada. His guitar playing, both acoustic and electric, has placed him in the company of the world’s top instrumentalists.

He remains deeply respected for his activism on issues from native rights to land mines, from the environment to Third World debt, working for organisations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth.

Throughout his career, Cockburn has deftly captured the joy, pain, fear, and faith of human experience in song, always expressing a tough yet hopeful stance: to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

For his many achievements, the Ottawa-born artist has been honoured with 12 Juno Awards, an induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada. But he never rests on his laurels.

His commitment to growth has made Bruce Cockburn both an exemplary citizen and a legendary artist whose prized songbook will be celebrated for many years to come.

Tickets to the show cost £20 and are available from thegate.org.uk.