26/01/2026
As a small child growing up in an abusive religious sect, Jean-Philippe Rio-Py's only comfort was an abandoned piano...
Jean-Philippe, also known as Riopy, says playing the piano saved his life.
His parents separated when he was six months old, and his young mother took him to an isolated community in rural France which he calls a cult.
"We had a weird guru slash leader, you know, who was a very, very bad person," he says. "We were heavily controlled... all in the name of God."
He wasn't allowed to have friends, read books or watch TV, and he was beaten to drive the 'ego' out of him. He was often made to sit still on a chair for a whole day - where he'd drift off into his own world.
"I developed a lot of OCDs, counting everything," he says. "I didn't know what it was until I got to 30 years old when I was like, oh, actually, I think that protected my brain, you know, from insanity."
But Jean-Philippe found solace in an abandoned piano, which he discovered when he was two years old. He began by playing just one note.
"The sound got me to a level that I cannot explain," he says. "As a drop, you know, exploding and splashing... emotions, towards my body."
He began to dream about making music. His obsessive habits meant that, when he wasn't at the piano, he continued practicing keyboard patterns in his head.
But when he was 14, the sect leader decided the piano was a sign of 'ego'. Jean-Philippe was dragged in front of 30-40 people and made to kneel before his mother.
"I mean, it was one of the most humiliating things because, yeah, they would just, you know, take you by the hair, and drag you like an animal."
By the time Jean-Philippe was 18, he was at breaking point. "I think it was really my inner voice being like, stop. Stop. I can't take it," he says.
He ran away from the cult, moved to the UK and got a job in a shop. But he was so depressed that one day he told a customer he was thinking of ending his life.
It was the first of a series of extraordinary chance encounters. The stranger took him for coffee and asked him about his life.
"He was very interested in understanding,” says Jean-Philippe. “And then he said, well, if your music is your life, you're a genius."
The words were incredible for Jean-Philippe to hear. All his life, he'd been told anything to do with 'ego' was wrong - and the idea of devoting himself to music had been out of the question.
The stranger helped Jean-Philippe get a music scholarship at Oxford-Brookes University, and he would go on to perform in pubs and bars in London.
While performing at a glitzy event, he was approached by Chris Martin from the band Coldplay – who offered, in the spot, to buy Jean-Philippe a grand piano.
Jean-Philippe used this piano to write his first album – and now he’s been streamed more than a billion times worldwide.
"For me, music is medicine," he says. "I want to carry on healing with the music."
It's not only music which has helped Jean-Philippe heal, but also love - including the love of strangers.
"I think the hardest thing of everything I've endured and grew up with was the lack of love. I had zero love," he says. "And love is the only answer. If we have love, I think we change the world."
🎧 Hear more on Outlook: https://bbc.in/49A9H2m
