“Andalusian cadences”: How are they commonly heard?

Question

The "Andalusian cadence" I-bVII-bVI-V is commonly heard as a repeated figure in Flamenco music as well as many pop songs, e.g. "Hit the Road, Jack":

In trying to think about how this cadence is typically perceived by the listener, classical music theory seems to give (at least?) two possibilities:

1. It is a perfect cadence: the V-chord at the end is heard to continually resolve into the tonic I at each repetition.

2. It is a half cadence: the I-chord at the beginning is heard to continually tense into the V-chord at the end, which then hangs there unresolved.

Generally I've been impressed by how much of pop music harmony can be understood by thinking in terms of perfect cadences (a V-I which ends a phrase or section) and half cadences (a phrase or section which ends in an unresolved V, often followed by a new phrase beginning on I). But in this case, I'm not sure I have a strong intuition about which kind of cadence this would be: or perhaps it is "ambiguous", or classical theory doesn't neatly apply here?

(I am aware that this is asserted to be a perfect cadence in the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andalusian_cadence But their argument that "[t]he Andalusian is an authentic cadence, because a dominant chord ("V") comes just before the tonic", is completely unconvincing: if a half cadence is followed by a phrase beginning in the tonic, we will also have a dominant followed immediately by a tonic. It seems to me that the relevant distinction is how the harmony interacts with sectional boundaries in the music, i.e. if the phrase or section ends with V-I, or if the V-chord comes as the last element of the phrase.)

Answer 1

It could be the case that the Andalusian cadence is attractive precisely because there is a certain amount of ambiguity to it (i.e., it can't be pinned down as either perfect or half cadence). If I may trust my own instincts on the matter, the cadence exhibits neither the "completeness" of a perfect cadence, nor the "incompleteness" of a half cadence; its semi-completeness is exactly what makes it musically satisfying but also what causes it to be perpetually driven forward. As we reach the V chord, we are compelled to expect the return of the i chord (prompting us to suspect that we are nearing the end of a perfect cadence), but as soon as we reach the i chord, we realize that the music's momentum is still driving us forward towards the V chord again (causing us to suspect that the real goal is the dominant chord, as in a half cadence). In short, the Andalusian cadence would probably be known as an "elided" or "dovetailed" cadence since the last chord of the progression becomes the first chord of the next iteration. This elision is what simultaneously causes the feeling of necessary return to tonic at the end of a phrase and also the feeling of momentum pushing us forward from the beginning of the next phrase.

To some, this may appear as a non-answer, but I think that there's nothing wrong with accepting, as your question implies, that it is neither obviously perfect nor obviously half cadence, but rather some mix of the two.

(Updated for concision.)