Which Puerto Rican salsa band was founded in 1954 by Enrique "Quique" Lucca Caraballo?

The Puerto Rican salsa band founded in 1954 by Enrique “Quique” Lucca Caraballo was La Sonora Ponceña. The group took its name from Ponce, Puerto Rico, where Lucca established the ensemble.

Lucca had formed an earlier group called Conjunto Internacional in 1944. After that band became inactive, he reorganized it in 1954 as Conjunto Sonora Ponceña. Its first official dance performance took place on April 20 that year.

The band’s sound developed through Cuban son, mambo, bolero, guaguancó, and Puerto Rican dance music. Lucca’s son, Papo Lucca, joined as a pianist while still very young and later became the group’s musical director and one of salsa’s prominent arrangers.

The name can be confused with Sonora Matancera, a Cuban ensemble that influenced La Sonora Ponceña’s repertoire. La Sonora Ponceña instead refers specifically to the long-running Puerto Rican orchestra from Ponce.