PASSPORTS UNDERGROUND: A Musical Journey

Welcome to PASSPORTS UNDERGROUND

I was never the loudest person in the room.

At parties, I found the aux cord instead — sitting with the music, letting it say everything I couldn’t. Somewhere between those early house parties and a thousand late nights after, my passion for curating music experiences started to take shape.

This is a travelling journal.

A series of mixes, stories, and scenes stitched together by underground culture — House, Bass, everything in between.

A way to document the real spaces and the real people, before they disappear into flyers, brands, and algorithms.

The Background

I came up in Winnipeg at a time when finding electronic music meant digging deep or making your own scene. Top 40 ruled the clubs. Electronic music barely existed outside of basements and sketchy raves.

So we built it to be more accessible and user friendly.

I started DJing because friends shoved the decks at me and said, You need to do this.

Shortly after, I started throwing events because the spaces we wanted didn’t exist yet. By 22, I was hosting 400–600 person events — sold-out shows, mini-festivals, after parties.

Always underground.

Always community-first.

Music was never just a career move. It was — and still is — my way of connecting with others.

It’s how I found purpose in a room.

It’s how I built communities, not just sets.

Over the past 15 years, I've curated and produced over 100 events, opened for 50+ international acts, played everything from wellness retreats to raves, curated stages at major festivals, and ran a sound camp at Burning Man.

But it’s never been about the flex.

It’s about the experience — the moments where a room full of strangers forgets the world outside and just moves.

What PASSPORTS UNDERGROUND Is

Passports Underground is a way to keep that energy alive while the landscape shifts.

Every city has an underground if you look hard enough.

It’s not on the googles.

It’s not on TikTok.

It’s a text from a friend. A door with no sign. A 3 AM crowd that knows exactly why they’re there.

This project is about chasing those spaces — listening, learning, documenting, and translating them into sound.

It’s 70% House — deep, techy, soulful.

30% Bass, breaks, weird experimental energy.

100% culture.

Each Passport Mix is a tribute to a scene, a night, a feeling, a vibe. Each blog post is a snapshot: where I went, what I heard, who I met, and what it meant.

Why Music Matters

Underground music culture built me.

It gave me a place to move, a way to speak, and a reason to stay up past sunrise chasing something real.

As a BIPOC artist, I'm not here to study the underground — I'm part of it.

It’s the communities that inspired me, the sound systems that shaped me, the nights that kept me going.

Passports Underground isn’t about branding diversity or checking boxes.

It’s about documenting the spaces and voices that actually move the culture forward — because they always have.

Music is the medium.

But it’s also about the spaces it creates — the physical and emotional worlds that open up when music unites us.

That’s the story I’m here to tell.

Where It Starts

Vancouver’s the first stop.

Finding the afterhours spots. The warehouse nights. The lounges packed at 2 AM.

Documenting it.

Mixing it.

Sharing it — before moving on to wherever the next beat leads.

Nothing fancy. Just the journey, one night at a time.

🎶 First Passport Mix dropping soon.

Follow @rivatonedj.

May peace be with you.

—

Jordan River