Hoot Haat NYC Brings Dhaka’s Best Underground to Queens

Swipe to preview all five disciplines of Hoot Haat NYC →

Hoot Haat calls itself a multidisciplinary cultural platform, and the description isn’t just branding. Rather than a single-genre pop-up, it’s a curated gathering that pulls underground and emerging Bengali creative communities under one roof — markets, exhibitions, live music, food, and workshops, all running at once. The platform is the work of Adrita Mahin Khan — creative director and co-founder of Bhai Bhai Productions and Abeg — and Inara Jamal, a chef and cultural curator. Together they built Hoot Haat around a simple bet: that Bengali artists, musicians, makers, and designers working outside the mainstream deserve a room of their own — not a token booth at someone else’s festival. On September 26, that bet plays out across five disciplines in Jamaica, Queens.

Set across Hrossho i‘s vibrant indoor-outdoor New York venue, Hoot Haat brings the same interdisciplinary spirit Inara built with Hrossho i in Dhaka — where open calls have pulled together painters, poets, filmmakers, and sound artists around a single theme, from collective grief to collective memory — to Jamaica, Queens. It’s the platform’s first full activation at its New York home.

Art

Painters, illustrators, tattoo artists, and digital creators fill the showcase, including work from Shamim Ahmed, Raiyaan Mahbub, and Adrita Mahin Khan. Expect pieces that lean into the platform’s underground identity rather than gallery-safe crowd-pleasers.

Music

This is where Hoot Haat gets its name — immersive sound journeys and underground sets run across unconventional speaker installations rather than a single main stage. The lineup features experimental artists and DJs including Dipto, yoanax0x, Dakini, and Shapuré — part of the same wave of independent Bangla sound that’s been showing up on NYC stages this year.

Crafts

Ceramics, prints, jewelry, and handwork are sold directly by the independent makers who built them — no middleman markup. It’s the closest thing to a proper maker’s market inside the wider gathering.

Food

Skip the usual chain-restaurant catering. Food comes from independent vendors and home kitchens, with curation from Chokh bringing distinctive, non-commercial flavors to a crowd that came hungry for something that actually tastes like home — the same independent spirit behind the Bangladeshi food scene Tinds has covered before.

Slow-Fashion

The fashion floor runs on a slow-fashion premise — pieces built to last a season, not a scroll, in the same spirit as the Dhaka designers Tinds has profiled before. Independent labels showing include Abeg, Hoollah, Paka Dhaka, Olokkhi, Denim Shenim, Aharya Collection, Dhaka Vintage, Project Fishtale, Milksore, La Vida by Abrar, Fungal, and WZN.

Founders Adrita Mahin Khan and Inara Jamal built Hoot Haat around direct contact — the point isn’t to watch from a distance, it’s to talk to the artist selling the print, the DJ who just came off a set, the designer whose label you’ve only seen on Instagram. That access is baked into the format: multi-speaker sound installations instead of a roped-off stage, vendor tables instead of a retail floor, and a lineup of experimental artists and DJs — Dipto, yoanax0x, Dakini, Shapuré — chosen for sets that push past a typical Top 40 party. Per Hoot Haat’s own framing, the goal is organic, community-shaped growth for creators working outside mainstream commercial structures.

For a lot of second-generation Bengali creatives in New York, the venues that showcase their work tend to split cleanly in two: the community-hall circuit built for an older generation, or a mainstream gallery and club scene that treats South Asian art as a niche add-on. Hoot Haat is trying to build a third lane — one curated by and for the people actually making the work, where a tattoo artist, a ceramicist, and an underground DJ share a bill without anyone having to explain the references. With around 100 people expected inside a single Jamaica, Queens space, it’s sized closer to a family gathering than a festival — which, for a platform built on direct contact between creator and audience, is exactly the point.

Did You Know?

Every label on Hoot Haat’s fashion floor shows under the “slow-fashion” banner on purpose — pieces made to outlast a season, not a scroll, and a direct rebuttal to fast fashion’s churn-and-burn cycle.

Hoot Haat NYC runs September 26 from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. — a full 10-hour window, so there’s no wrong time to show up, whether you want the calmer early-afternoon browse or the after-dark set list. The address is 17235 Henley Rd in Jamaica, Queens (view on map). Tickets run in three tiers — Early Bird at $18, Second Tier at $22, and Third Tier at $28 — through the event’s official Posh page, where tier availability and any updated parking or transit guidance should be confirmed directly, since specifics can shift closer to the date. Food comes from independent vendors and home kitchens rather than a fixed concession stand, so budget accordingly and come hungry — this isn’t a menu of festival-standard chain snacks.

More From Tinds

1. Bangladeshi Musicians Hit New York
2. Sahar Rahman: The Designer Putting Dhaka on the Fashion Map
3. Ayeman Ibne Amin: Transforming Bangladesh’s Food Scene With Remarkable Eateries

Sources

Tinds is a proud community partner of Hoot Haat NYC.

1. Hoot Haat NYC — Official Event Registration, Posh
2. Inara Jamal (@inara29) — Instagram, confirming her role founding Hrossho i and Chokh and co-founding Hoot Haat
3. hrôsshô i — Open Call Listing, India Art Fair Noticeboard